^\^^'^// Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030618429 Cornell University Library LF795.E85 L99 A histon, of .Eton.CoMj,a}»i, 3 1924 030 618 429 lis A HISTORY ETON COLLEGE. (^f iSJ^^M^tOl^ '.■.'■/t'jd/bPuZ'li-sbe-d- byJi^fiu:?-/?!.?./^ HISTORY OF ETON COLLEGE 1440 — 1884. H. C^ MAXWELL LYTE, C.B. DEPUTY KEEPER OF THE RECORPS. IVITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. H. DELAMOTTE AND OTHERS. A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK. .1889. The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved. ETONENSIBVS ETONENSIS. ORIGINAL PREFACE. AN historical work on Eton admits of several modes of treatment, and commands the interest of persons of various tastes and habits of thought. According to some, it should be a biographical register of successive Provosts, Fellows, and Masters, who have guided a great national institution through more than four centuries of almost unbroken prosperity ; according to others, it should trace the continuous existence of an ecclesiastical corporation, richly endowed and boasting a picturesque pile of mediaeval build- ings ; some think that it should follow the careers of a vast number of England's greatest men from the cradle to the grave ; others that it should be a record of educational progress, a treatise on grammars and exercises ; while yet another class would wish to see in it a faithful picture of school life at different periods, with long accounts of popular games and boyish adventures. Much has already been written about Eton from one or other of these points of view, but no comprehensive work on the subject has yet appeared. My object has been to produce a History of Eton in which matters of biography and architecture, studies and pastimes, old customs and single viii ORIGINAL PREFACE. incidents, should each receive their due share of notice, and fall into their proper places, side by side, in chrono- logical order. Yet it is impossible, within reasonable limits, to be at the same time comprehensive and exhaustive ; and I have not dwelt on the lives of any persons, however remarkable, save in so far as was necessary to illustrate their connection with the College. Nor have I attempted to supplement or supersede such excellent monographs as Mr. Blake-Humfrey's Eton Boating Book, or Mr. Stapylton's Eton School Lists. A great portion of my book is based on the authority of original manuscripts hitherto unnoticed by any writer. The notes on the early history of Eton in such works as Sir E. S. Creasy's Eminent Etonians, and the Annals of Windsor, are almost exclusively derived from the collections of Roger Huggett, a Conduct (or Chaplain) at Eton in the middle of the eighteenth century, who bequeathed to the British Museum the transcripts and extracts he had made from the College records. Yet Huggett never saw some of the most important documents relating to the building of the Church, and he made no use whatever of the invaluable series of Audit Rolls and Audit Books, which extends with but few breaks from 1444 down to the present time. By the special permission of the Provost I have been allowed to examine these and all the other manuscripts preserved in the Library and Muniment Room at Eton. I have also consulted many manuscripts in the British Museum, at the Record Office, in the Bodleian Library, at Cambridge, at Lincoln, at Windsor Castle, in the Archbishop's Library at Lambeth, and in the possession of private individuals, among whom I may mention the Hon. G. ORIGINAL PREFACE. ix M. Fortescue, the Hon. Mrs. Hodgson, the Rev. J. C. B. Riddell, the Rev. C. C. James, and J. H. Patteson, Esq. I have made a point of quoting the authorities for my statements on every possible occasion ; where no reference is given it must be understood that I have derived my informa- tion from the testimony of some old Etonian. For assistance received in the course of my researches my best thanks are due to the Bishop of Lincoln, Lord Coleridge, Bishop Abraham, the Rev. George Williams, the Rev. G. J. Dupuis, the Rev. T. Brocklebank, the Rev. S. S. Lewis, the Rev. J. T. Hodgson, F. W. Cornish, Esq., C. Branch, Esq., C. D. Cobham, Esq., R. Williams, Esq., and many others. The Rev. W. L. Collins has most generously placed at my disposal the notes he has made for a future edition of his brilliant little book Etoniana. But, above all, I have to thank the Provost, who, from the first day on which he heard of my undertaking, has never varied in his kindness towards me, and who by his antiquarian knowledge has saved me from errors and omissions which I should otherwise have made. It would be too much to hope that many such will not still be found in the following pages. H. C. Maxwell Lyte. 1 8 Albemarle Street, December, 1875. NEW PREFACE. IN preparing for the press a new edition of this History of Eton College, I have made various alterations, which I hope are improvements. In the first place, I have availed myself largely of the results of Mr. J. W. Clark's minute re- searches, as embodied in the first volume of his Architectural History of the University of Cambridge. A great part of Chapter HI. has been consequently re-written, so as to show more closely the successive changes made by Henry VI. in the plans for the Collegiate Church and buildings. Many of the extracts which I had given from Audit Rolls and other documents are now omitted from the footnotes, as having been printed more fully, and in some cases more correctly, in Mr. Clark's valuable work. Although I have not had an oppor- tunity of verifying all the remaining quotations, I have made a great number of verbal alterations in the text and the footnotes alike. More important are the additions which I have incorporated upon the authority of books recently printed, and of manu- scripts in the British Museum, at Hatfield House, at Belvoir Castle, and elsewhere, hitherto unquoted. Several old Etonians have favoured me with reminiscences. The Rev. J. C. Keate has most kindly furnished extracts xii NEW PREFACE. from his father's correspondence and from the diary kept by a member of his family residing at Eton when Dr. Keate was Head-Master. The last chapter has been considerably en- larged, the brief record of recent events being extended from 187s to 1884. By the addition of numerous entries, the Index has been almost trebled in size. The lithographed plates have been re-drawn, with the ex- ception of one, which has been omitted. On the other hand, the number of illustrations has been increased by the insertion of three borrowed from Mr. Clark's book already mentioned, and the like number from the English Illustrated Magazine. The remainder of the woodcuts, being printed from electrotypes, ought not to be inferior to those in the original edition. For corrections made or assistance given since 1875, I am indebted to the late Earl of Abingdon, the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the late Provost of King's College, Cambridge, the Hon. G. N. Curzon, M.P., Sir R. E. Welby, K.C.B., the Rev. J. H. Snowden, T. Thring, Esq., W. E. Heathfield, Esq., F. W. Cornish, Esq., H. Perry, Esq., R. H. Blake-Humfrey, Esq., Capt. Godsal, W. J. Seton, Esq., and others. Mr. J. W. Clark has very kindly read the proof sheets and made many valuable suggestions. H. C. M. L. 3 PoRTMAN Square, W., July, 1889. TABLE CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. 1440 — 1442. PAGE The First Idea of the College — Choice of Site — Charter of Founda- tion — Papal Bulls — The Alien Priories — Endowments and Privileges — Indulgences — Early Buildings — Opening of the School — ^William Waynflete i CHAPTER II. 1442—1447- Thomas Bekynton — Opening of the College and Admission of Waynflete as Provost — Connexion between Winchester and Eton — Bulls of Indulgence — Pilgrims at Eton — Fairs on Ash- Wednesday — Books, Vestments, Jewels, and Relics — Death of Cardinal Beaufort — Promotion and Consecration of Waynflete — Provosts Clerk and Westbury ... 16 CHAPTER III. 1447— 1460. Progress of the Buildings — Completion of the Hall — Adaptation of the Old Church— The King's " Will "—Alterations in the Plan- Magnificence of the proposed Church — The Hospital of St. James near Westminster — Confirmation of Property — Eton Heraldry — Papal Bulls — William Weye's Travels — John Blakman — Characteristics of Henry VI 31 xi\- CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. 1460 — 1482. PAGE Success of the Yorkist Party — Attempted Suppression of Eton College — The Struggle for Existence — Death of Henry VI. — Earl Rivers — The College Seal — Completion of the Church — Definite Re- establishment of the College — Death of Westbury — William Paston — Provost Best and Jane Shore — Funeral of Edward IV. 58 CHAPTER V. 1483— 1509. Richard III. and Henry VII. — Death of Waynflete — Paintings in the Church — Mediseval Legends — Style of the Paintings — Restitu- tion of Property — Altars and Images in the Church — Death of Dr. Bost — Election of Dr. Lupton — Distinguished Visitors . . 82 CHAPTER VI. 1509—1547. New Buildings — Benefactors — Property near London — Ecclesiastical Surveys — William Horman — Resignation of Provost Lupton — Bishop Aldrich — Funeral of Jane Seymour — Richard Cox and Nicholas Udall — The Eton Plays — Confiscation threatened — Funeral of Henry VIII. . . . 95 CHAPTER VII. 1547—1558. Bishop Longland — Suppression of Colleges — Sir Thomas Smith — Marriage of the Clergy — Charges against the Head-Master — Inquest on a Scholar — Changes in the Church — Roger Hut- chinson — Destruction of Books, etc. — The Marian Reaction — Provost Cole iig CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE Eton Life in the Sixteenth Century 134 CHAPTER IX. 1558—1595- Fall of Provost Cole — Election of William Bill — Ecclesiastical Changes — Addresses of the Scholars to the Queen — Election of Richard Bruerne — Visitation of the College — Election of William Day — French Hostages — Fast Days — Dispensation to the Fellows — Royal Visits . . • ' 54 CHAPTER X. 1595— 1623. Election of Henry Savile — The Eton Library — Distinguished Visitors — Lady Savile — The Eton Press — St. Chrysostom — John Cham- ber, Adam Robyns, William Charke, and Richard Mountague — The Commensals — Philip Lytton — Dismissal of a Head- Master — Death of Sir Henry Savile — Provost Murray . .178 CHAPTER XL 1623— 1639. Contest for the Provostship — Lord Bacon — Sir Henry Wotton — Pillars in the Schoolroom — Thomas Weaver — Robert Boyle — Prosperous Condition of the School — Commensals — Contest for Fellowships — The " Ever-memorable " John Hales — Death of Sir Henry Wotton 203 CHAPTER XII. 1639 — 1660. Provost Steward — Political Troubles — Deprivation of the Provost — Appointment of Francis Rous — Rules for the Scholars — Eject- ment of the Royalist Fellows — The Engagement — John Hales — Death, and Benefactions of " Lord " Rous — The Puritan Fellows — Provost Lockyer 224 xvi CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. 1660 — 1681. PAGE The Restoration — Nicholas Monk — New Fellows — Regulations as to Discipline — John Meredith — Robert Boyle and Edmund Waller — Richard AUestree — Financial Reform — The Upper School — Nathaniel Ingelo — Contests for Fellowships — School List of 1678 , 240 CHAPTER XIV. 1681— 1728. Zachary Cradock — Charles Roderick — John Newborough — The new Upper School — Hunting the Ram — Henry Godolphin — Altera- tions in the Church — Andrew Snape — Henry Bland — Edward Littleton— William Pitt 259 CHAPTER XV. 1728 — 1760. William George — Jacob Bryant — Horace Walpole — Gray's Ode — Visits of the Duke of Cumberland — Francis Goode — A Contested Election at King's — William Cooke — John Burton — The Library — Visit of George II. . . . 280 CHAPTER XVI. Eton Life in the Eighteenth Century 294 CHAPTER XVII. 1760— 1781. First Visit of George III. — Building Operations — Edward Barnard — Charles James Fox and James Hare — John Foster — The Re- bellion of 1768 — A Public Flogging — The Election of 1778 — Lord Wellesley — Richard Porson — Theatricals — Dr. Barnard as Provost 307 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVIII. 1781 — 1809. I'AGE William Hayward Roberts — Jonathan Davies — John Langford — Anecdotes of George III. — The Microcosm — George Canning — The Miniature — Cricket — Boating — George Heath and Joseph Goodall — Benefactions— Condition of the Collegers . 327 CHAPTER XIX, 1809 — 1834. Administration of Dr. Keate — Attempted Rebellions in 1840 and 1818 — State of Education at Eton — Frequency of Floggings — Theatricals — Magazines — Cricket — Boating — Other Sports — Practical Jokes — Dr. Goodall as Provost — Resignation of Dr. Keate . . 345 CHAPTER XX. 1834—1852. Appointment of Dr. Hawtrey — Educational Reform — Provost Hodgson — Improvement in the Condition of the Collegers — Sanatorium — The " Christopher " — Restoration of the Chapel — Mathematics — Modern Languages — Swimming . . 399 CHAPTER XXI. 1 561 — J 847. Et(ix MoNTE.\r 450 CHAPTER XXII. 1853-1884. Changes under Dr. Goodford — Cricket — Rifle Corps — Boating- Appointment of a Royal Commission — Changes under Dr. Balston — The New "Governing Body" — New Statutes — Changes under Dr. Hornby — Magazines — Material Improvements — The Eton Mission — Death of Dr. Goodford— Conclusion 472 b CONTENTS. APPENDIX A. The Original Statutes . . PAGE 493 APPENDIX B. Rites of Initiation at Eton 506 APPENDIX C. The New Statutes . 509 APPENDIX D. Lists of Provosts and Head- Masters 520 Index . 523 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PLATES. PORTRAIT OF HENRY VI. . Frontispiecc PLANS FOR THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH . . . tofacep. 46 MALE HEAD, FROM MURAL PAINTING . io face p. 88 FEMALE HEAD, FROM MURAL PAINTING . tO face p. 158 MAP OF ETON COLLEGE . after p. 492 WOOD ENGRAVINGS. I'AUK LEADEN BULLA OF POPE EUGENIUS IV. . J 2 FIRST SEAL OF ETON COLLEGE . 1 5 THE HALL (FROM THE BREWHOUSE YARD) . to face 3 f'AGE XX LIST OF ILLUSTRA TJONS. SIGNATURE OK HENRY VI. 43 INITIAL WORD OF ROYAL CHARTER, A.D. I446 tO faCC 50 ARMS OF ETON AND OF KING'S COLLEGE 54 IRON HANDLE IN THE GALLERY . • • 57 SIGNATURE OF EDWARD, DUKE OF YORK . 59 SEAL OF ETON COLLEGE 70 ST. ETHELDREDA AND ST. THEODOSIA 84 ST. DOROTHEA AND ST. BARBARA 85 MURAL PAINTING IN THE CHURCH 87 MURAL PAINTING IN THE CHURCH . 88 GATEWAY UNDER LUPTON'S TOWER . . 94 DOUBLE DOORWAY IN THE NORTH WALK OF THE CLOISTER . 96 DOUBLE DOORWAY IN THE WEST WALK OF THE CLOISTER ... 97 LUPTON'S CHAPEL . ■ to face 98 REBUS OF PROVOST LUPTON . XI 8 BUTTRESS, AND NORTH WALL OF THE ANTECHAFEL . 133 LONG CHAMBER, A.D. 1844 (adapted from the plate in Radclyffe's Memorials of Eton) ■ . . . to face lyj MURAL PAINITNG IN THE CHURCH . 1 58 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xxi OFFICIAL SEAL OF THE PROVOST . . 177 CHIMNEYS FACING THE SLOUGH ROAD . I ?4 EWER AND DISH BOUGHT IN 1613 . 188 MONUMENT OF PROVOST MURRAY 202 OAK-TREE IN THE SHOOTING-FIELDS . 2IO INTERIOR OF LOWER SCHOOL . to face 211 , , , DOOR LEADING- INTO THE PLAYING-FIELDS . 223 THE CHAPEL FROM THE SOUTH 233 THE LECTERN .. 235 SILVER SALT-CELLAR BOUGHT IN 1656 239 GENERAL VIEW OF ETON COLLEGE (from Willis and Clark's Architectural History of Cambridge) . to face 252 STAIRCASE TO THE UPPER SCHOOL AND CHAPEL . tO face 266 THE CHAPEL, A.D. 1816 tO face 269 THE LOWER SCHOOL AND LONG CHAMBER 277 THE CHRISTOPHER INN, A.D. 1828 . 2S3 COLLEGE PL.VI'E . 293 VIEW FROM EARNE's POOL BRIDGE 306 xxi i LIST OF ILL US TRA TIONS. ETON COLLEGE FROM ROMNEY LOCK PUMP IN THE CLOISTER THE UNDER-MASTER AT ETON, A.D. 1793 SIXTH FORM BENCH AND FELLOWS' EYOT VIEW FROM FIFTEEN ARCH BRIDGE . DR. KEATE BLOCK AND BIRCH . SHEEP BRIDGE AND SIXTH FORM BENCH GROUP ON THE FOURTH OF JUNE WINDSOR CASTLE . . DR. GOODAI.L AND DR. KEATE INTERIOR OF THE UPPER SCHOOL GATEWAY INTO THE SCHOOL YARD ENTRANCE TO WESTON'S YARD THE LONG WALK . INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL DR. HjVWTREY FELLOWS' POND AND SHEEP BRIDGE . 444 PAGE . to face 309 326 330 to face. ' 339 344 353 36s 3S0 to face 38s to face 389 to face 396 402 413 to face 420 427 to face 430 440 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xxiii PAr.K ETON COLLEGE, FROM THE TERRACE, WINDSOR CASTLE 449 "SALT ! salt!" . . . 453 A SALT-BEARER . 457 GEORGE III. AND QUEEN CHARLOTTE AT ETON MONTEM, A. D. 1778 . to face 460 MONTEM TICKET . 471 THE SCHOOL YARD . . io face 479 INTERIOR OF THE HALL . . to face 487 EXTERIOR OF THE UPPER SCHOOL . 4g2 Mostly engraved by Percy Roberts. William J. Palmer. Jewitt iS-= Co. James D. Cooper. W. M. Quick. Erratum. 'age 215, line 19, for John, read Richard. A HISTORY OF ETON COLLEGE liCHAPTER^ 1440 1442. The first Idea of the College — Choice of Site — Charter of Foundation — Papal Bulls — The Alien Priories— Endowments and Privileges- Indulgences — Early Buildings — Opening of the School— William Waynflete. N attempt to trace the history of Eton College from its foundation takes us back to a period of the utmost depression in every branch of literature and learning in England. The Latin of the clergy and the lawyers was hopelessly corrupt, and the very tradition of Greek scholar- ship had passed away. Poggio, who visited this country shortly before the birth of Henry VI., drew a gloomy picture of the state of its classical studies,' while the decline in the number an.d quality of English works was no less evident. ' Hallam's LHeraiure of Europe, (ed. 1854) vol. i. p. 107. B 2 THE FOUNDER. On the other hand, such knowledge as did exist was becoming more widely diffused, and a movement in favour of popular education had set in. The fifteenth century witnessed the foundation of several colleges and schools, which in course of time bore good fruit. It was the good fortune of Henry VI. to pass his early years among patrons of learning, and to their influence we may ascribe a considerable share in the formation of his character and views. His uncle, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, who figures in general history chiefly as an ambitious and turbulent politician, is to this day com- memorated as a benefactor in the solemn bidding-prayer of the University of Oxford. The Duke's great rival, Cardinal Beaufort, was the immediate successor of William of Wykeham, and, as such, the official Visitor of the colleges founded by him at Winchester and Oxford. The fame of these noble institutions must also have reached the ears of the young King through other members of his Court. Henry Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Bekynton, the King's Secretary, had both been Fellows of New College. Both were doubtless, enthusiastic about William of Wykeham and his foundations, which were destined to exercise so important an influence on the future course of education in England. To Wykeham is due the idea of a college at the university continually supplied with scholars from a great grammar- school, an idea which was adopted not only by Henry VI., but by Cardinal Wolsey, by Sir Thomas White, and by Queen Elizabeth. The foundation of the two Winton Colleges is also important as marking a turning-point in the struggle between the regular and the secular clergy. During the middle ages, the monasteries had been the principal seats of education in England, but their inefficiency had become notorious by the end of the fourteenth century. Wyke- ham despaired of accomplishing any. great work with FIRST IDEA OF THE COLLEGE. 3 monks for teachers, and accordingly followed the example of Walter de Merton and others, in excluding them from any place in his colleges. It is not a little significant that part of the endowments granted by him had been purcha.sed from I'eligious houses. This was the first step towards the con- fiscation of monastic property begun by Henry V. and finished by Henry VHI. Between Wykeham's time and Henry VI. 's assumption of power, several colleges and schools had been founded, but little provision had been made for poor scholars, who often had to resort to begging as a means of obtaining the necessaries of life.' John Langton, Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and Chancellor of the University from 1428 to 1447, is said to have been the first to suggest to the King that he should do for Cambridge what Wykeham had done for Oxford.^ Henry VI. was just entering manhood, but, unlike his illustrious father, he had shown no tendency towards frivolity or profligacy. Fuller has summed up his character by saying that " he was fitter for a coul than a crown ; of so easie a nature that he might well have exchanged a pound of patience for an ounce of valour." 3 Having himself received a careful education, he was anxious that his subjects should enjoy opportunities of acquiring knowledge ; and he was the more inclined to interest himself in the welfare of the ■ For an account of learning and educatioii in England in the middle ages, see Mr. MuUinger's valuable work on The University of Cam- bridge from the Earliest Times to the Royal Injunctions of 1535, and the Munimenta Academica Oxon. edited by Mr. Anstey for the Rolls Series. I may also be allowed to mention my own History of the University of Oxford from the Earliest Times to the year 1530. 1886.) = Mullinger, p 306 ; Cooper's Memorials of Cambridge, vol. i. p. 175. A book at King's College, written on parchment about the year 1452, mentions " M agister fohannes Langton quondam Cancellarius Universitatis Cantabrigie, capel- lanus regiiis, et postea Dei gracia Menevensis Efiscopus, qui per in- stanciam suani et labores spectales Collegium Regale antedictum in Universitate predicta per graciam graciosissiwi fiindatoris fujtdari procuravit, Sr^c." 3 Worthies of Etiglatid — Berks. P 2 4 THE FOUNDER. young, from the fact of his having been born on the festival of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of children. Chicheley, the founder of All Souls, may have pointed out the advantage of securing the masses and prayers of what an old writer styles "an honest college of sad priests;"' and Beaufort, the benefactor of St. Cross, near Winchester, may have pleaded the cause of the aged and the infirm. However this may be, the King made the scheme his own, declaring that its adoption should mark the commencement of his per- sonal rule, and be " the first pledge of his devotion to God." "^ Wykeham had caused his grammar-school to be built under his own eye, in his cathedral city of Winchester ; and in like manner, Henry of Windsor selected for his school a site at Eton, close to his own birthplace and residence. From the windows and terraces of his castle he hoped to be able to watch the progress of the buildings, and, possibly, some day to see the College completed, girt about with walls and crowned with towers. The first step taken by the Founder towards the execution of his great undertaking was to make arrangements with regard to the parochial church of Eton, which had hitherto been in private hands. Payn Burghill, the Rector, was in- duced to resign his post in December 1439,3 and the advowson became the property of the King in the month of August following. Burghill was doubtless rewarded at the time with some benefice of greater value, and a few years later he received a prebendal stall at Windsor. t Meanwhile another member of that Chapter, John Kette, was appointed to hold the rectory of Eton, while the details of the new scheme' were under consideration. It was above all necessary that the ' Hall's Union of the two noble \ 3 Original deed in the Library at a7td illustre Famelies of Lancastre ' Eton. and Yorke, 1^.^7.2,. * 'Lg 'i>i^v&'s Fasti Ecclesice An- " Correspondence of Bekyntcn, 1 glicana, vol. iii. p. 386. vol. i. p. 231. THE CHURCH OF ETON. 5 King should visit and personally examine Wykeham's famous College at Winchester, which was to serve as a model for his own. He accordingly went there on the 30th of July, 1440, and attended several services in the Chapel.' A few weeks later, the King formally announced his intention of founding a new college in the parochial church of Eton and on ground adjoining the north side of its cemetery, and he appointed three proctors to execute all legal forms connected with the foundation, and specially to conduct negotiations with the Bishop of Lincoln, whose extensive diocese included the whole county of Buckingham.^ William Alnwick, then occupant of that see, entered warmly into the scheme, and extolled the goodness of the King towards " our Holy Mother the XZhurch of England, which in these last days the sons of Belial would have destroyed," but for the royal protection. The Bishop in his turn ap- pointed certain commissaries to act on his behalf. They were all men of distinction — William Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury; William Lyndwode, Keeper of the Privy Seal, the great canonist ; Thomas Bekynton, the King's Secretary ; and Richard Andrew, the first Warden of All Souls College. These commissaries received authority from the Bishop to convert the parochial church of Eton into a collegiate church governed by a Provost and Fellows, to receive the resignation of the Rector, and then to give corporal investiture to the Provost designate.3 The royal and the episcopal proctors delayed the execution of their respective functions until they were in possession of the King's charter of foundation, which bears date the I ith of October, 1440. This document has been printed more than once already ; so that it will be sufficient in this ■ Walcott's William of Wyke- j vol. ii. pp. 287 — 290. September ham and his Colleges, p. 136. I 12, 1440. - Correspondence of Behynton, '■ "- Ibid. pp. 274 — 27S. 6 CHARTER OF FOUNDATION. place to give a translation of the first part of the pre- amble, which, as will be seen, breathes the spirit of a zealous churchman : — " Henry, by the grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting. " The triumphant Church that reigneth on high, whose head is the Eternal Father, and to which hosts of saints minister, while choirs of angels sing the glory of her praise, hath appointed as her vicar on earth the Church militant, which the only-begotten Son of the same God hath so united to Himself in the bond of eternal love, as to deign to name her His most beloved Bride ; and in accordance with the dignity of so great a name, He, as a true and most loving Bridegroom, hath endowed her with gifts of His grace so ample, that she is called and is the Mother and Mistress of all who are born again in Christ, having power as a Mother over each of them ; and all the faithful honour her with filial obedience as Mother and Mistress. Through this worthy consideration, indeed, saintly princes in times past, and most particularly our progenitors, have always so endeavoured to pay the highest honour and devout veneration to the same Holy Church, that besides many other glorious works of their goodness in her praise and in honour of her Spouse, their royal devotion hath founded, not only in this our kingdom of England, but also in divers foreign regions, monasteries, churches, and other pious places richly established in affluence of property and goods. Wherefore we also, who, by the disposition of the same King of kings (through whom all kings do reign), have now taken into our own hands the government of both our kingdoms, have from the very beginning of our riper age carefully revolved in our mind how, or in what manner, or by what royal gift, according to the measure of our devotion and the example of our ancestors, we could do fitting honour to that our same Mistress and most Holy Mother, to the pleasure of that her great Spouse. And at CHARTER OF FOUNDATION. 7 length, while we were thinking .over these things with the most profound attention, it hath become a fixed purpose in our heart to found a college, in honour and in support of that our Mother, who is so great and so holy, in the parochial church of Eton near Windsor, not far from our birthplace." Henry VI. therefore proceeded to found and establish a college " to endure to all time, to the praise, glory, and honour of our Crucified Lord, to the exaltation of the most glorious Virgin Mary, His Mother, and the support of the Holy Church, His bride." " The Kings College of our Lady of Eton beside Windsor " was declared to be a body corporate, capable of holding lands and advowsons in perpetuity. While reserving power to himself to make changes in the future, the Founder sketched out a constitution for the College, and nominated some of the original members. They were to consist of a Provost, ten Fellows, four Clerks, six Choristers, a Schoolmaster, twenty-five poor and indigent Scholars, and the same number of poor and infirm men.' This scheme may be said to have united the characteristics of a college of secular priests, a school for boys, and an almshouse for poor men. The Almshouse was suppressed during the Founder's own lifetime ; the College of priests, after more than four centuries of honourable existence, has lately been doomed to destruction ; while the School has gradually risen to an un- rivalled pitch of prosperity, and has practically monopolised the revenues and the very name of Eton College. The Bishop of Lincoln's commissaries met the King's proctors on the 13 th of October, 1440, in the parochial church of Eton, and combined in declaring that that building was, and should thenceforth be styled, a Collegiate Church. They ■ Correspondence of Bekynton, I Cambridge, and Eton College, pp. vol. ii. pp. 279—285 ; Heywood and 388 — 393, &c. Wright's Statutes of King's College \ 8 PAPAL BULLS. then adjourned for a week. At their second meeting, Bckyn- ton appeared in his capacity of Archdeacon of Bucks, and. as such, gave his assent to the appropriation of the Church to the Provost, Fellows, and College. After this, he joined his colleagues in accepting the resignation of John Kette, the Rector, who was appointed one of the original Fellows of the College. Henry Sever was then formally inducted as Provost," so as to give reality to the hitherto merely nominal existence of the new institution. These formalities were but just concluded at Eton, when Dr. Richard Chester, one of the King's chaplains, was de- spatched to Italy to procure the Pope's ratification. He carried with him a letter of safe-conduct addressed to the Archbishop of Cologne, as well as letters of introduction to Cardinal Barbo and the Bishop of Bayeux, who were then at the papal Court.^ A second envoy. Dr. Richard Caunton, followed him thither a few months later, to make matters more sure.^ They found the Pope at Florence, where he had lately held a General Council, and outwitted the dele- gates of the Greek Church. Eugenius IV. has been described as " the first Pope who displayed an inclination to favour the learned," "■ and he made no difficulty about giving his assent to King Henry's scheme. In January 1441, he issued three bulls, one confirming the foundation, 5 another per- mitting the King to assign suitable costume to the members,'' and a third allowing the Provost and College to farm out their lands, even to laymen. ^ On the Lady Day following the promulgation of these bulls, Henry VI. issued the first and most important of a series of charters relative to the endowment of the College.^ We Correspondence of Bekynton, ^ Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. ii. pp. 285 — 287, 290—292. " J did. vol. i. pp. 136, 218, 219. 3 Ibid. p. 217. ■* Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. i p. 102 vol. ii. pp. 270 — 293. ^ Ibid. p. 294. >■ Ibid. pp. 295 — 297. 8 Heywood and Wright's Sta- iutes, pp. 393—403- THE ALIEN PRIORIES. 9 shall not give a list, or attempt any history, of the various manors, rectories, and pensions, which were granted for the purpose of providing funds for the mainten- ance of the College ; but we may in passing mention the source from which most of them were obtained — the Alien Priories. , William I. and the nobles who followed him into England had, naturally enough, bestowed some part of their newly- acquired wealth on the religious houses of their native land, and the practice was continued by their descendants. In course of time, certain Norman and other foreign monasteries thus acquired considerable property in this country, for the due management of which cells, or priories, were established on the spot. Some of these were treated as mere dependencies and were expected to transmit their whole revenue to the mother houses ; while others were self-governed and merely yielded some slight tribute. After the cession of the Duchy of Normandy to France, the former class of priories became a source of income to the French- kings, and on this account they were frequently seized by the Plantagenets in time of war. They were as often restored on the declaration of peace. At last, in the second year of Henry V. an act of Parliament was pas.sed absolutely suppressing those priories which were actually alien, and granting their possessions to the Crown, " a rentent que divines services en les lieyx avaunt citz purront pluis duement estre f aits par gentz Englois en temps a venir, que n ont este faitz avaunt ces heures en ycelles par gentz Fraunceys!' ' Most of the property thus confiscated passed into the hands of Henry VI. ; and the English envoys to the Council of Basel were specially instructed to defend these proceedings on national grounds.^ The suppression of the Alien Priories has ' Dugdale's Monasticon Angli- canum, vol. vi. p. 985. There are fuller accounts of the Alien Priories in Oliver's Monasticon Dioecesis Exon, pp. 423—425, ^nd Nichols's Alien Priories. " Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. ii. pp. 263 — 265. 10 THE ALIEN PRIORIES. been cited as a precedent for the dissolution of the monas- teries in the next century ; but the purposes to which the proceeds were applied were very different. Henry of Lan- caster transferred the property from French to English monasteries, or, at most, from the regular to the secular clergy. Henry Tudor dispersed his plunder among a num- ber of worthless courtiers, and then applied to Parliament for new subsidies. A portion of the estates still held by Eton College were taken from such abbeys as Fecamp, Fontenoy, Yvry, and St. Stephen's at Caen, but the largest grants were made out of the former possessions of Herlouin-Bec, the great Benedictine establishment which had sent forth Lanfranc and Anselm into England. Some of them were named after it — as Tootingbec, Weedon-bec, and Bekford. Many of the original title-deeds, attested by fine seals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, passed with the estates, and may now be seen in the Library at Eton. In addition to these possessions of the Alien Priories, which were scattered over a great part of England, the King took care that the College should hold property in its own im- mediate neighbourhood. With this object he purchased various lands in the counties of Bucks and Berks, as well as certain rights of fishery in the Thames. He also bought up all the available houses, gardens, and fields in Eton itself ; and, by a series of grants extending over several years, made over all these new acquisitions to the Provost and College. Almost every little plot of ground had its own distinctive name, often derived from that of some former owner. Thus we come across such names as Huntercombes-garden, Rolffeshawes, and Cowepenning. Most of these fifteenth-century names have fallen into disuse, the principal exceptions being Coldnorton, Southfield, Bullockslock, and Jourdelay's Place. The King's Worth clearly forms part of the present Playing- Fields, and a careful antiquary might doubtless identify most ENDOWMENTS AND PRIVILEGES. ii of the localities by means of early deeds. Here, however, we are concerned with the history of the College, rather than with the topography of the parish of Eton. The King's successive charters of endowment received the sanction of several parliaments, which also granted to the College various feudal rights in its manors, such as escheat, forfeiture, wardship, fines, treasure-trove, and wreckage. Its property was, moreover, exempted from the jurisdiction of the King's marshals, stewards, and coroners, as well as from all payments under the heads of hidage, scutage, aids, and the maintenance of soldiers and ships. This exemption extended even to the regular taxes granted to the Kings of England by Convocation, by Parliament, or by the Pope. As a special precaution against any dearth of food at Eton, all the inhabitants were exempted from the jurisdiction of the King's purveyors, and from having any of his officers or servants quartered upon them.' The King and Parliament were able to make these and other similar civil grants to the College ; but the former was also anxious to secure for it special ecclesiastical privileges. For this purpose his envoys in Italy were instructed to apply for papal Indulgences, which would attract strangers to Eton, and make its name famous throughout England. They succeeded in obtaining a bull granting to all penitents who should thenceforth visit the Collegiate Church of Eton at the feast of the Assumption, Indulgences equal to those which could be obtained on the 1st of August at the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula at Rome. All who wished to partake of these privileges were ordered to contribute towards the maintenance of the College, and advised to offer prayers for the Founder.'' A year, however, had not quite elapsed from the date of this bull, before Eugenius IV. was induced to enlarge its provisions, by making the Indulgence plenary ' HeywoodandWright's5Ar/z^/(7j, I " Correspondence of Bckynton, Rolls of Parliament, ?i.c. \ volii pp. 297— 299. 28th May, 1441. 12 INDULGENCES. instead of partial. At the same time he warily introduced a clause providing that three-quarters of the offerings of the penitents should be devoted towards the defence of Christen- dom against the Turks, an object in which he naturally took more interest than in the prosperity of a new college in a distant land.' The Lord Chancellor was entrusted with only one key of the alms-box at Eton, the other being committed to the Pope's collector in England.'' 'ms\^^^ m^%'. Leaden Bulla of Pope Engenius IV. Chester and Caunton may have represented that these changes did not really promote the cause which they had most at heart, for another bull was issued in favour of Eton a few weeks later. The Provost was thereby authorised to hear) the confessions of all members of the College, either personally or by deputy, and, if desirable, to release them from excom- munications, suspensions, and interdicts, and even to absolve them once in cases specially reserved for the consideration of the Holy See. Inasmuch as the penance was in some cases to be continued by the heirs of deceased penitents, it is evident that it must ordinarily have consisted of a monetary payment. The Pope, however, tried to guard against the possibility of persons committing deliberate sin in the ' Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. ii. pp. 299 — 302. 9th May, 1442. Ibid. pp. 302—303. INDULGENCES. [3 expectation of an easy absolution, by making certain fasts a necessary part of the penance.' Soon after the receipt of the bulls of Indulgence, Arch- bishop Chicheley wrote to the Bishop of Exeter ordering him to publish them in his diocese, and describing them as more ample than any hitherto issued by any Pope.^ The acceptance or publication of papal bulls was strictly illegal in England at this period under the Statute of Praemunire, and offenders were liable to suffer forfeiture of their property, and indefinite imprisonment of their persons. 3 Henry VI. took care to provide against such a contingency in the case of the members of his new College, by procuring a parliamentary pardon in their favour for all bulls already received, and a general licence to receive others in future.* In May 1443, a third agent was despatched to the papal Court, in the person of Dr. Vincent Clement, a foreigner, for whom Henry VI. had, with some difficulty, obtained a degree at the University of Oxford. 5 We must, however, leave him on his journey to Rome in order to revert to the progress of affairs at Eton. The foundation-stone of the College was undoubtedly laid by the King himself below the future site of the high altar,^ but little progress was made with the new Church during the first few years of the work. The building accounts of John Hampton, surveyor of the works, have been preserved among the muniments at Eton, the Jornale anno prima commencing on the 3rd of July, 1441. Henry VI. had already directed the Lord Chancellor to issue letters to the master-mason, author- ising him ■■' to take as many masons, wheresoever they may ' Correspondence of Bekynton, \ * Heywood and Wright's S/ti- vol. ii. pp. 303-306. 23rd July, 1442. ! tzties, p. 418. Wilkins's Cond/m,vo].m. p. 537, quoting Bishop Lacy's Register, \. 239- 3 Gibson's Codex Juris Eccle- siastici, p. 74. 5 Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. i. pp. Ixxiv. 231. ^ Capgrave, De Illustribus Hen- ricis, p. 133. 14 WILLIAM WAYNFLETE. be founden, as may be thought necessary." " The number of workmen varied considerably in different weeks, the average being about sixty-nine for the first year, and one hundred and sixteen in the second, but the wages were settled on a regular scale. A special kiln for bricks was made at " le Slough " in 1442, and thenceforth we come across mention of the "breke layeer," who must have been engaged on the dwelling-rooms of the College. Matters were sufficiently advanced by 1442 to allow of the School, at least, being opened. Wykeham's College at Winchester had been the model for Eton in many respects ; and it was to Winchester that Henry VI. had recourse for assistance in the task of giving real, as well as legal, existence, to his new foundation. On his first visit thither, he must have noticed the great capacities and lofty aspirations of William Waynflete, then Master ; and he could not have selected a man of more practical experience or sounder judgment. There are at least two separate biographies of this great churchman, to whom Eton owes so much, from which we find that his original surname was Patten. Under this name he was educated at Oxford ; but at the time of his ordination as sub-deacon, in 142 1, he assumed that of his birthplace, Waynflete, in Lincolnshire, according to a practice then not uncommon. He was appointed Master of Winchester in 1429, and, together with that post, he held the Mastership of a small hospital in that city, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, whom he afterwards selected as the patroness of his College at Oxford.^ William Waynflete had been Master at Winchester for about eleven years when Henry VI. induced him to re- sign that office for the corresponding one at Eton. He was ' Bentley's Excerpta Historica, pp. 43, 46 ; where, however, the to Bishop Stafford, Bekynton's predecessor at Bath, who -was editor mentions Bekynton as 1 Chancellor of England. " Chancellor of England." The 1 ° Chandler's Life of William document was obviously addressed 1 Waynflete. ] VILLI AM WAYNFLETE. ' 15 accompanied by five Fellows and thirty-five Scholars of Winchester,' who thus formed the nucleus of a school which has, in course of time, outstripped the older institution in prosperity and in fame. ' Walcott's William of Wykeham and his Colleges, p. 135. First Seal of Eton Cclkge. 1442— 1447- Thomas Bekynton — Opening of the College, and Admission of William Waynflete as Provost — Connexion between Winchester and Eton — - Bulls of Indulgence — Pilgrims at Eton — Fairs on Ash-Wednesday — Books, Vestments, Jewels, and Rehcs — Death of Cardinal Beaufort — Promotion and Consecration of Waynflete — Provosts Clerk and Westburv. NE of the earliest and most constant patrons of the rising College of Eton was Dr. Thomas Bekynton, who has been already mentioned as a Wykehamist, and as secretary to Henry VI. In this latter capacity, he was entrusted with the management of the tedious negotiations with the papal Court respecting the bulls for Eton, and of other matters connected with the foundation. He soon caught the infection of his royal patron's enthusiasm, and devoted his best energies to the work committed to him. Before starting on a journey to Bordeaux, in 1441, he especially commended himself to the prayers of the Provost and Fellows.' When becalmed at sea on the way, he vowed an offering to the Blessed Virgin of Eton, and persuaded some of his companions to do likewise, and to join with him in singing an antiphon in her ' Letters of Margaret of Anjou (Camden Society), p. 79. THOMAS BEKYNTON. 17 honour; after which, we are told, a favourable wind arose.' An inventory taken in the next century shows that this was not the only offering which he made to the College, as mention is made of sixty- three silver spoons, with gilt knobs, marked with the letters T, and B. on either side of an episcopal cross.'^ He must have presented them after his elevation to the see of Bath and Wells. Dr. Bekynton is said to have accompanied the first batch of King's Scholars from Eton to the sister College of St. Mary and St. Nicholas, at Cambridge ; 3 and he certainly witnessed the ceremony by which two Masters of Arts were admitted nominal members of Eton, as a preliminary step towards becoming Fellows of King's.* One of his last acts as Arch- deacon of Bucks consisted in exempting Eton from his own jurisdiction, and that of his successors in the Archdeaconry. The arrangement to this effect was confirmed by the Bishop of Lincoln, who decreed that the College should pay annually i/. 2s. \\d. for the privilege, out of the receipts of the manor of Bledlow.5 This was in September 1443, and we may notice as an instance of the continuity of our ecclesiastical insti- tutions, that the money is still paid to the Archdeacon year after year. The Provost exercises archidiaconal jurisdiction over the whole parish of Eton, and it is perhaps on this account that he and his predecessors have been considered entitled to a seat in the lower house of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury. When Bekynton was rewarded for his good services by being elevated to the see of Bath and Wells, he selected Eton as the place of his consecration. The ceremony was performed on the 13th of November, 1443, "in the old Collegiate Church of " Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. ii. p. 184. ^ Inventories of Goods at Eton, temp. Hen. VIII. 3 Correspondence of Eekynton, vol. i. p. xlv. * Eton Muniment Room, Drawer 40, No. 4. s Ibid. Drawer 48, Nos. 3, 4. 1 8 THOMAS BEKYNTON. the blessed Mary of Eton," the officiating prelates being Alnwick, Bishop of- Lincoln, Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, and Ashby, Bishop of Llandaff. After the conclusion of the service, Bekynton, attired in his new episcopal robes, proceeded across the cemetery to the site of the future church, whose walls as yet rose only a few feet from the ground. An altar, protected from the weather by a tent or awning, had been erected for the occasion immediately over the spot where Henry VI. had laid the foundation-stone ; and there it was that Bekynton celebrated his first mass as Bishop. He after- wards broke his fast at a banquet which he gave to the assembled visitors in one of the new buildings on the north, not yet partitioned oiT into separate rooms.' Bekynton came to Eton once more that year, as joint commissioner with the Earl of Suffolk, for the purpose of formally opening the College. It seems doubtful whether Henry Sever, who was designated as the first Provost in the charters of foundation and endowment, ever held more than a titular office. He cannot have held even that for very long, and he is chiefly memorable as a benefactor to Merton College, of which he was subsequently appointed Warden.^ Waynflete was certainly Provost of Eton in the autumn of 1443, and he was the first person to appear before the com- missioners in December, in the choir of the Collegiate Church. A royal dispensation was then read, temporarily suspending all those portions of the statutes which related to buildings as yet incomplete ; after which Waynflete knelt down and ' Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. i. p. cxix. ^ Wood's extraordinary statement that Henry Sever was Dean of Westminster has been implicitly accepted, and repeated by Sir E. Creasy, and by the editors of the Registrum Regale. They all seem to have forgotten that Westminster was a monastery until the reign of Henry VIII. Sever died in 1471 ; and the first Dean of West- minster was appointed in 1540. Inasmuch, moreover, as he was a secular priest he could hardly have been Abbot. Henry Sever has also been identified with a Bishop of Durham, who died in 1505, and whose Christian name was William. THE STATUTES. 19 reverently swore to obey the statutes. He was then formally installed in the principal seat on the south side of the choir, and he proceeded to tender the oath to the Fellows, Clerks, Scholars and Choristers. The full number of each of these grades was still incomplete,' but the members then present became the nucleus of a corporate body, which has lived through more than four centuries of English history. Some additions were made to the statutes a few years later, but their principal enactments were already definitely settled, many sections being copied word for word from the statutes of Winchester College.^ The revised code of Henry VI. was nominally in force till 1872 ; but for many generations past it had been " more honoured in the breach than the observ- ance.'' A sketch of the regulations enjoined by the Founder will be found in an appendix ; but it is necessary to observe that the constitution as eventually settled by the statutes differed in several respects from the original scheme of 1440. Ten Chaplains were added to assist at divine service ; the number of Clerks was raised from four to ten, and that of the Choristers from six to sixteen. A still larger increase was made in the School, which was thenceforth to consist of seventy Scholars, instead of twenty-five, and an Usher was provided to assist the Master in the work of education. On the other hand the only reduction made was in the number of the bedesmen, which was to be thirteen instead of twenty-five. These larger numbers were exactly copied from those at Winchester, except that Wykeham had pro- vided for only three Chaplains and three Clerks, and that his College did not include an almshouse. It will be seen hereafter how the actual number of members fell short of that prescribed by Henry VI. The kindly interest with which the members of Winchester • Eton Muniment Room, Drawer ,No. I. ' The Statutes of Winchester Col- lege were printed in 1855, by desire of the Commissioners under the Act 17 and 18 Vict. c. 81. C 2 20 WINCHESTER AND ETON. had from the first viewed the foundation of a rival institution at Eton was not impaired by any kind of jealousy. Waynflete's promotion to the Provostship rather strengthened the tie which bound the two Colleges together, especially as he was succeeded in the management of the School by William Westbury, who had actually received his education .at Winchester.' So warm, indeed, was the feeling of friendship between the collegiate foundations of Wykeham and Henry VI., that, in July 1444, an attempt was made to express it in legal form. Under the direction of their respective Wardens and Provosts, the four Colleges combined in a solemn covenant to assist and support one another mutually in all causes, trials, and difficulties, through future ages. The only exceptions to the ample promises then interchanged, were firstly a proviso that the Wykehamists should never be called upon to act in opposition to the Bishop or the Convent of Winchester, and secondly a clause based on common sense, relieving each of the contracting Colleges from incurring ex- cessive pecuniary expenses on behalf of the others.^ The close bond of union between Winchester and Eton, thus confirmed, lasted for many years, and friendly relations have ever been cultivated between these two great institutions. Henry VI. had occasion to be at Winchester frequently, in the first few years after the foundation of Eton, and he used to make a point of visiting the College, whose ideas and system he had so avowedly adopted.^ It is interesting to notice that, in 1444, the cloth for the Eton gowns was purchased at Winchester. t We must now revert to Vincent Clement, who, as we have seen in the first chapter, started for Italy in May 1443.S Eugenius IV. was no longer at Florence, having returned to ' Eton Audit Roll; Epitaph in Rawl. MS. B 267. " Walcott's William of Wyke- ham and his Colleg'eSj-p-p. 141 — 143. ' /did. p. 137. < Eton Audit Roll, 1444 — 1445. = Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. i. p. 231. NEGO TIA TIONS A T ROME. 1 1 his proper residence at Rome, and thither Clement followed him. In answer to a letter reporting his safe arrival at Siena, the envoy received from Bishop Bekynton a distinct statement of his patron's wishes. " I would have you believe that it will be far more acceptable to the King to obtain a moderate Indulgence lasting for all time than a great and ample one, limited to a specified period." ' Two months later, Bekynton wrote again, saying that a thousand ducats had been placed to Clement's credit for the due prosecution of the affair.'' Several of the letters from Rome seem to have miscarried, and the King became very anxious as to the state of the negotiations. " His daily enquiry is : — ' When shall we have news of Master Vincent .? When will letters reach us concerning his doings }'" = Bekynton's letter to this effect must have crossed one from Clement written at Rome, on the last day of the year, in a desponding spirit. Failure seemed inevitable ; and the failure would involve the loss of King Henry's favour.t A fortnight later, the envoy had somewhat better news to communicate, inasmuch as he had secured the assistance of the Pope's Chamberlain, and other members of the Court, who would soon ascertain for him the exact price at which the Indulgence could be pur- chased. ^ Bekynton answered these letters in March, assuring Clement that he still stood well with the King, who was as hopeful as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the writer himself.^ Clement's mission eventually proved successful, for in May 1444, the much-desired bull was issued, confirming and extending the previous Indulgences. The licence was made perpetual, and the objectionable clause respecting the distribution of the offerings of the penitents was entirely ' Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. i. p. 160. - Ibid. p. 186. 5 Ibid. p. 174. Ibid. p. 175. Ibid. p. 179. Ibid. p. 178. 22 PAPAL BULLS. omitted. In fact, the power of granting plenary Indulgences at the feast of the Assumption at Eton was made unconditional' The Provost could certainly be trusted to exact ample payments from the pilgrims, when the money was to be exclusively devoted to the maintenance and aggrandisement of his own College. Eugenius IV. was induced to grant further privileges to Eton some time later, by a bull authorising the Eton confessors, at the feast of the Assumption, to commute the vows of all penitents, except vows of pilgrimages to Rome, or to Santiago of Compostella. . The Provost and his deputies were moreover empowered to give Indulgences of seven years apiece, to pilgrims who should in any future year devoutly visit the Collegiate Church on any of the festivals of the Blessed Virgin, or St. Nicholas, or on that of the Translation of St. Edward the Confessor.^ More than this, it was almost impossible for a Pope to grant. The King was so pleased at the result of the negotiations, that he marked the receipt of the bulls by exercising his prerogative of mercy, in pardoning two persons, who, for high treason, had been condemned to be '' drawen, hanged, and quartered." ^ According to the strict teaching of the Roman Church, an Indulgence was not, as some Protestant controversialists have imagined, a remission of sin past or future. The former could be given in absolution only ; the latter not at all. An Indulgence was (or professed to be) the remission of the penalty owing for sins already pardoned, called penance in this life, and purgatory afterwards.* Thus these bulls of ' Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. ii. pp. 306 — 309. There is a duplicate of this document, with the leaden bulla attached, in the British Museum. Additional Charter, 15,569. (See page 12.) ° Correspondence of Bekynton, vol. ii. pp. 309—311. Jan. 25, 1447. 3 Bentley's Excerpta Historicn, pp. 389, 390 ; Rymer's Fcedera, vol. xi. pp. 178—179. July 14, 1447. "• Wiseman's Lectures on the Catholic Church, \o\.n. p. 71 ; Mil- ner's End of Religious Controversy, p. 302. PIL GRIMS AT E TON. 1 3 Eugenius IV.' specifically limited the benefit of the Indulgences to persons who were really penitent, and had duly confessed. The staff of priests ordinarily attached to the Collegiate Church of Eton was, of course, utterly insufficient to meet the spiritual wants of the crowds of persons who were attracted thither by the Indulgences, and they had to procure external assistance. The earliest audit- roll preserved at Eton records a payment of 2I. 3^'. \\d. for the hire of thirty beds for confessors and their servants, at the feast of the Assumption, 1445.' In subsequent years, the ceremonies were attended by " various bishops and confessors." ^ Henry VI., moi'eover, added a statute to the original code, exacting an oath from every Fellow that, in the event of his ever being elevated to the episcopate, he would annually attend the festival of the Assumption at Eton.3 Notwithstanding the trouble and expense incurred in obtaining the papal bulls, they do not appear to have proved very profitable, and the cost of entertaining so many strangers used often to exceed the amount of the offerings, which ranged from 20/. to 30/. a year.* It may have been as some assistance towards meeting the charges of hospitality that the King granted to the College three tuns of red wine of Gascony, to be delivered annually in London, free of charge.s It will be remembered that that vine-bearing country then formed part of the dominions of Henry VI. The English were shortly after expelled from the whole of Aquitaine, and in subsequent ages the College was ■ Eton Audit Roll, 1444—1445- '' In conductione xxx lectorum or- dinatorum pro confessoribus et eorum servientibus ; '' Ibid. 1 447 — 1448. '■ In expensis Johannis Salman eqiiitantis London pro capis et Ubris eiga festum Assump- tionis beate Marie, \\f iiij''" " Eton Audit Rolls, 1452 -1453, 1457— 1458, 1459— 1460. ^ Heywood and Wright's 5/a/«/^j', p. 619. * Eton Audit 'B.o\i%, passim. 5 Heywood and W right's 5^ia;/«/«, pp. 416 — 422 ; Eton Audit Roll, 1444 — 1445- "' Custodi cellarie domini Regis London pro iij doliis vini ab eo receptis ex dono dicti fundatoris, xx^" 24 FAIRS A T ETON. paid in money instead of in kind.' A special provision for the temporal wants of the pilgrims to Eton was made by the establishment of an annual fair on the six working days following the feast of the Assumption. The site recom- mended was called " Michelmyldshey," which must have been near the further end of the Playing-Fields. This meadow was also to be used on the three days following Ash-Wednesday for another fair, doubtless intended for the due supply of Lenten provisions. Both these fairs were exempted from the jurisdiction of the King's purveyors, marshals, and officers, and placed entirely under the control of the Provost.'' Some traces of the latter fair survived until recent times, though its site and purpose had been changed in the course of four centuries. The main road through Eton was found more accessible than Michelmyldshey, and pigs a more lucrative article of commerce than salt fish. Many old Etonians can remember the fairs on Ash-Wednesday, and the vain attempts of the farmers to defend the unfortunate animals from the mischievous boys, who used to cut off" the pigs' tails as trophies. The combination of all the lessons of a " whole schoolday" with the Church services of a holyday on Ash- Wednesday in the present century, was probably due rather to the humane instincts of the authorities, than to any desire on their part to mark Lent as a penitential season. The two fairs were established by Henry VI. to provide for the exceptional wants of the College ; but in those days, when the facilities for communication were not so great as at present, the rapid growth of Eton was felt to be a severe strain on the ordinary resources of the immediate neighbour- hood. A petition was accordingly addressed " to the King, oure soveraine lord and gracious founder," reciting that ' Calendar of State Papers, | ton), p. 566. Domestic, 1655, (ed. M. A. Green) ' Heywood and Wright's 5/(7^«to, p. 161 ; Calejidar of Treasury | pp. 427 — 428. Papers, 1697 — 1702, (ed. Reding- i PETITION FOR BOOKS. 25 the " College Roiall of oure most blessed Lady of Eton, and the inhabitants withynne the same toune, scholers, artificers, and laborers theder resortyng, have had many times here- afore, and yette have, grete scarstee of brede, ale, and other vitailles, for default of a markett in the same toun." The specific request of the College for a weekly market on Wednesdays was at once granted by letters patent.' In 1446, the Provost and Fellows of King's combined with those of Eton in another petition, stating that neither of these Colleges " nowe late fownded and newe growyng " were sufficiently supplied with books for divine service and for their libraries and studies, or with vestments or ornaments, '■' which thinges may not be had withowte great and diligente labour be longe processe and right besy inquisicion." They therefore begged that the King would be pleased to order his chaplain Richard Chester, who had been one of his envoys to Italy, to " take to hym suche men as shall be seen to hym expedient and profitable, and in especiall John Pye,'' the King's " Stacioner of London, and other suche as ben connyng and have undirstonding in suche matiers," charging them all " to laboure effectually, inquere, and diligently inserche in all place that ben under " the King's " obey- saunce, to gete knowleche where suche bokes, onourmentes, and other necessaries for '' the " saide colleges may be founden to selle." They were anxious that Richard Chester should have authority " to bye take and receive alle suche goods afore eny other man .... satisfying to the owners of suche godes suche pris as thei may resonably accorde and agree. Soo that he may have the ferste choise of alle suche goodes afore eny other man, and in especiall of all maner bokes, ornementes, and other necessaries as nowe late were perteynyng to the Duke of Gloucestre." ^ ■ Sloane Af5. 4839, fif. 139— 141- I the goods of Duke Humphrey, who = The Rev.George Williams gives was a collector of ecclesiastical an account of the disposition of ! treasures, as well as of books, in 26 VES TMENTS A ND JE WELS. Another petition, relating to the ornaments of the two Colleges, conceived in a very different spirit, was presented to the Founder in the same year. It proceeded from a certain Robert Cocksale, vestment-maker, of London, who evidently entertained some doubts as to the solvency of the new Colleges, as his prayer was for permission to retain his goods, until he should receive payment for them. The vestments had been ordered by Langton, late Bishop of St. David's, formerly Chancellor of Cambridge. The principal item in the account for Eton was for a set consisting of a chasuble and two tunicles, and two copes of white satin, embroidered with gold, evidently intended for use on great festivals. They cost the large sum of 83/. 6s. 2>d., besides extras for lining. There is a curious charge of \s. 6d. for " hallowing," or consecrating, the vestments. Cocksale's bill amounted to over 240/., of which considerably more than half was charged to the account of King's College.' So too Henry VI. in his "will," some two years later, gave 500/. to his College at Cambridge " for to stuff them with Jewells for the service of God ; " but only 200/. to Eton " for to purvey them books to the pleasure of God." ' The reason for this apparent pre- ference of one College over the other may be found in the fact that the new foundation at Eton got the benefit of all the ornaments of the old parochial church. Thus, in the earliest audit-rolls, payments are recorded for the repair of vestments. The King presented the College with relics and jewels on at least three separate occasions. One of his gifts consisted of a finger-joint and part of the spine of John the Confessor, formerly Prior of Bridlington, which had been given to him by the monks of that convent.^ Another consisted of a the Ecclesiologist, vol. xx. pp. 304 — 315 ; vol. xxL pp. I — 4. ' Archaologia, vol. xvi. pp. 6 — 8. ° Heywood and Wright's Statutes, p. 185, where, however, the sum given to King's College is wrongly set down as 200/. 3 Eton Muniment Room, Drawer 48, No. 12. CARDINAL BEAUFORT. 27 portion of certain jewels which the Duke of Gloucester had arranged to purchase from the Abbey of St. Albans, but which, after his death, the King had managed to secure for a large sum.' Intermediate in time, and perhaps in intrinsic value between these two, came the " Tablet of Bourbon," which was said to contain portions of the blood of our Lord, of His cross, of " the glorious Virgin Mary His Mother, and of His most blessed Confessor Nicholas, and of Catharine the Virgin, and of other martyrs, confessors, and virgins." This precious tablet was one of the jewels on the security of which Cardinal Beaufort had lent a large sum of money to the Crown. The Cardinal bequeathed it un- conditionally to Henry VI. ; but there must have been some understanding between them on the subject, as the King describes himself as merely a trustee for the conveyance of the jewel to Eton.^ The same prelate gave a more direct and more substantial legacy to his great- rtephew's new foundations, in the shape of 1,000/. to each, which was to be deducted from the money still owing to him by the King. He thus hoped to secure a special collect at one of the ordinary daily masses in the two Collegiate Churches, and an annual observance of the anniversary of his death.3 Blakman's account of the transaction is more touching, but, though nearly contemporary, evidently less correct. Accord- ing to him, the sum of 2,000/. was first offered by the Cardinal's executors to Henry VI., who refused it, saying : — " He was always a most kind uncle to me while he lived. God reward him ! Fulfil his intentions. I will not take the money." * The codicil in favour of Eton and King's was executed on the 9th of April, 1447, and the Cardinal died on the nth. ' Ecdesiologist, vol. xxi. pp. I — 4 ; Rolls of Parliament, vol. v. p. 307. ' Bentley's Excerpta Historica, pp. 44—46. ^ Nichols's Royal Wills, pp. 338—339- ■• Hearne's Otterbourne, vol. i. p. 294. 28 WILLIAM WAYNFLETE. Beaufort's death produced consequences far more important to the welfare of Eton than the mere acquisition of a jewel or a legacy ; it gave occasion for the removal of the first real working Provost. The King was informed of the death of his great-uncle on the very day of its occurrence, and he at once wrote to the Prior and Convent of Winchester bidding them elect William Waynflete as their bishop. This letter must have crossed one from them ; and so the King wrote a second time urging them to proceed " in al godeley haast."' Waynflete was accordingly elected by a unanimous vote on the 13th of April, and the fact was duly notified to the King and to the Pope. The former, of course, signified his formal approval of the election without diffi- culty ; but the latter appeared to be in the not unfrequent dilemma of having to choose between waiving his own claims to nominate, and giving offence to so orthodox and pious a prince as Henry VI. There was, however, a con- venient fiction by which such difficulties could be sur- mounted ; and the Pope made use of it, by declaring that he had already " provided " Waynflete to the see of Winchester, during the life of the late Bishop. Waynflete at first refused the proffered dignity, saying that it was too great for him ; but we have no means of judging whether his «(3^ ^//jc(?/rtr2 was more than a decorous form. Anyhow, the messengers from Winchester found the Provost of Eton in the Collegiate Church one evening towards sunset, and succeeded in persuading him to obey the call.^ Henry VI. must have been brought into close contact with Waynflete during the slow progress of the works at Eton, and must have noticed in him that combination of earnestness and prudence which is so desirable in a states- man. For such a man the little world of a college was really too narrow. It would at first sight appear that, in Chandler's Life of Waynflete, I ' Ibid. pp. 37, 39, 312. p. 299. I WILLIAM WAYNFLETE. 29 removing him from Eton, the King was sacrificing the best interests of his own favourite foundation to those of the diocese of Winchester. Yet such was not the case ; and the course of subsequent events shows that this appointment proved the very salvation of Eton College. The great authority and influence, political as well as ecclesiastical, of the see of Winchester enabled its occupant to act as the protector of smaller institutions. The promotion of the Provost likewise attracted public attention to the place which he was about to resign ; and publicity was naturally one of the Founder's aims. Waynflete selected the scene of his labours and ' his honours as that of his consecration ; but, before this could take place, he had to take the regular oath, disclaiming everything in the Pope's bull of Provision which in any way infringed on the rights of the English Crown.' Bekynton had, as we have seen,^ been consecrated in the old Collegiate Church of Eton, and similar rites had, in 1444, been per- formed over John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester.3 Wayn- flete's consecration, in July 1447, was therefore the third that had taken place there within four years.'* The members of his former College at Winchester resolved to do honour to their future Visitor, and presented him with a horse which cost them more than 6/. The Warden and others rode to Eton to attend the ceremony, and there distributed 13J. /\d. amongst the scholars.^ On the morrow of the consecration, John Clerk, the Vice- Provost, was unanimously chosen to succeed Waynflete, the election taking place in the vestry {in vestibtdo) of the College.* Nothing is recorded of him except that he had resigned a good benefice in order to become a Fellow of " Le Neve's Fasti Ecdesice An- glicance, vol. iii. p. 1 5. ^ Page 17. 3 Stubbs's Registrum Sacrum. ■t Ibid. '=• Walcott's William of Wyke ham and his Colleges, p. 143. * Eton Register, vol. i. f. 2. 30 WILLIAM WAYNFLETE. Eton.' Nor did he live long enough to acquire any repu- tation in his new capacity. Clerk's tenure of the Provostship was shorter than that of any of his successors except Bruerne, and even less eventful. He died four months after his election, and was succeeded by the Head-Master, William Westbury, under whom the College experienced strange vicissitudes. Westbury was elected in November 1447 ; and in the following January he went to Winchester to be present at the enthronement of Bishop Waynflete in the Cathedral Church. The pomp of the ceremony was en- hanced by the presence of Henry VI. and his Court, among the members of which was Bishop Bekynton. The Pro- vosts of Eton and King's, with their respective suites, were entertained at breakfast in Wykeham's College, and dined in the Warden's hall.= The enthronement may have been postponed to suit the King's convenience, but Waynflete had already entered upon his episcopal duties. By special per- mission of the Bishop of Lincoln, he held his first ordination in the Church of Eton ; 3 perhaps as an earnest that his advancement to one of the highest dignities in the realm would in no way lessen the affectionate interest which he took in his patron's noble foundation. ' Eton Muniment Room, Drawer 46, No. I. " Walcott's William of Wyke- ham, T^T?. 137—138, 143—144. 3 Chandler's Life of Waynflete, p. 41. Dec. 23, 1447. 1447 — 1460. Progress of the Buildings — Completion of the Hall — Adaptation of the old Church— The King's " Will "—Alterations in the Plan— Magni- ficence of the proposed Church— The Hospital of St. James, near Westminster— Confirmation of Property— Eton Heraldry— Papal Bulls — William Weye's Travels — John Blakman — Characteristics of Henry VI. BODY of clergy had been collected, and a school opened at Eton, so soon after the formal foundation, that few or none of the buildings contemplated by the King could have been ready to receive the original members. It seems clear that the first constructive works undertaken were tem- porary alterations and additions to certain houses and barns which then occupied part of the site of the future College. Accommodation had to be found for a considerable number of workmen, as well as for the priests and scholars. The free- masons were for many years allowed to use a house adjoining the churchyard either as a shop or as a dwelling : ' the labourers and some of the boys were quartered in the town. ' Eton Audit Roll, 1482^1483. I inter cimiierium et casam lato- " Pro ewendaiione magni hostii \ morum." 3 2 H 'ORKMEN AT E TON. Security against evil communications was provided by a clause in an act of Parliament forbidding the inhabitants of Eton to take in any lodgers without the permission of the Provost, and every spare room in the town was thus practically placed at his disposal.' The account-books of the successive clerks of the works at Eton furnish many interesting particulars with regard to the buildings erected, or begun, by Henry VI. All the skilled men received three shillings a week apiece, except that the sawyers, carpenters, and ordinary masons, called "hard-hewers," re- ceived only two shillings and six pence in those numerous weeks which contained a holy day ; whereas the freemasons received their entire wages without any deduction for Saints' days or other anniversaries. The common labourers were paid at the rate of four pence or five pence a day. These wages were somewhat lower than those given elsewhere at the same period, but, on the other hand, no diminution was made in winter, when the hours for work were of course shorter. The workmen at Eton were, moreover, supplied with the necessary tools, as appears from fines imposed on some of their number for breaking divers implements, and an estimate " for making, amending, and repairing, of pikees, shovelles, and othere instrumentes of the seid werkemen." =" Like workmen of our time, and persons of much higher rank in their own time, the men employed on the buildings at Eton used to dine in the middle of the day, and it appears that they were fined if not back at their respective posts " at one of clocke." A batch of twenty-one men forfeited a whole day's wages on one occasion because " they wolde not go to theire work til twoo of clocke," and others got into trouble " for late cuming." A modern Trade-Union would probably support a member who was fined merely because " he wold ' Heywood and Wright's iVa/Kto, p. 422. ° Records of Buckinghamshire, vol. iv. pp. 117, 118; Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 399. BUILDING MATERIALS. 33 kepe his owris, and never go to werke till the clocke smyte." A freemason lost half a day's pay for going away without leave. During working hours, the men were subject to strict super- vision, and fines were imposed on any who were seen " fyting," or who '' wrostled and playde and ron about." The paymaster naturally raised objections to a man who "wol not do nor labor but as he list hymselfe," or who " will not do as he is bedyn." The fine " for shedding lime " was sixpence ; that " for looking about," " for playing," or " for chiding," was twopence. The overseer was also severe upon one who " wolde tell tailes,'' and another who persisted in " telling tailes and letting {i.e. hindering) his felowes." ' Large quantities of stone were annually conveyed to Eton. Some came from Merstham near Reigate, some from the neighbourhood of Maidstone, and some, more expensive, from the celebrated quarries of Caen. Mention is also made of " modrestone " from Langley, " hethstone " from Hughenden, and " ornell " from London, whence the cost of freight in barges was one shilling and four pence per ton. Among other material supplied by the King, we may notice the " rag " stone of the old walls of the Savoy Palace in the western suburb of London. Lead came from the Peak in Derbyshire, and sea-coal from Newcastle on Tyne. Flint was obtained from Windsor, Medmenham, and Marlow ; and a great part of the necessary timber was felled in the neighbourhood of the College. After delivery, it was stored at the " Timbrehaw " on the further side of the highroad to Slough, where a piece of ground still bears the name of the " Timbralls," although more generally known as " Sixpenny " during the cricketing season, and " the Field " in winter." ' Keys's Accounts. {Records of Buckinghamshire, vol. iv. pp. 117, 118 ; Willis and Clark, vol. i. PP- 383) = Lynde'S; Vady's, and Burton's Accounts. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 386-396.) D 34 EARLY BUILDINGS. None of the early accounts preserved at Eton contain any detailed description of the plan on which the buildings were actually erected. A contract made in November 1443 between the Provost and the clerk of the works on the one side, and a carpenter named Whetelay on the other, mentions ten chambers on the eastern side of the College, a hall, a cloister, and seven towers and turrets.' Two years later, the chief stonemason was sent to London to consult the Marquess of Suffolk about the construction of the Hall.= This building seems to have become available for use in 1448 or 1449, when " a high table " was purchased for the Provost and Fellows, and rushes were procured wherewith to strew the floor on two occasions.3 In 1450, the windows of the Hall were fitted with 191 feet of "storied glass" and a larger quantity of glass " flourished," or flowered, " with lihes and roses and certain Arms."-* The three large stone fire-places were doubtless made at this date, for use of an evening between the beginning of November and Easter tide, as specified in the statutes, though without date. The bonfires on certain festivals were probably lighted on the floor immediately under the open louvre. A library and a chamber for the Vice-Provost were finished in or before 1446, but it is impossible to ascertain their respective situations.5 "The quadrant of the College" is specially mentioned for the first time in the spring of 1443, and there is very little doubt that this term was used to denote the existing Cloister, or rather that part of it which was then in course of construction.* In February 1448, an ofiicial estimate was made that a further expenditure of 40/. — ' Vady's Accounts, 1445 — 1446- (Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 389, 390-) " Ibid. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. P- 393-) 3 Eton Audit Roll, 1448 — 1449. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 403.) ^^ Pro cirpi.'i emptis ad duas vices pro aula predicta sternenda." * Keys's Accounts, 1449 — 145°. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 403.) 5 Vady's Accounts, 1445 — 1446. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 393.) * Lyndes Accounts, 1442 — 1443. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 389.) P.H.OEUAHOTTC: Db The Hall, Jrom the Brew-honse Yard. THE OLD CHURCH. 35 equivalent perhaps to 480/. nowadays — would suffice for " the hous'ing" which should "close ynne the quadrant." ' Although the King must from the first have intended to build a suitable church for Eton College, he did not hesitate to spend money freely on the fabric of the old parochial church, so as to adapt it for the temporary use of the members of the new corporation. The chancel was materially altered within, if not actually rebuilt, and chancel and nave were alike paved with tiles. Part of the chancel was fitted up as a treasury for jewels and other ecclesiastical ornaments, and another part as a vestry. Skilled artificers were engaged to adorn the windows with glass, which might afterwards be transferred to the new church. Thirteen windows in the chancel were accordingly filled with " powdred glass '' varied with figures of the Prophets, and " flourished glass " was also provided. Figures of St. Hugh and St. Anne, and shields bearing the Arms of Edward the Confessor, Henry VI. and Queen Margaret, were set up in other windows.^ A seat of state, called the King's "closet," or "pue," separated from the chancel by a glazed " parclose," or screen, and hung with arras, was reserved for the pious King and his consort, who doubtless often attended the services at Eton, when they came to inspect the progress of the works.3 The construction of the new Church, which, as has been seen, was " not yet half finished " at the time of Bishop Bekynton's consecration in 1443, lasted several years. In 1446 or 1447, a temporary chapel roofed with tiles was erected within it, to protect the high altar at which he had said his first pontifical mass.* According to an estimate submitted to the King on the 7th of February 1448, the choir would during ' Willis and Clark, p. 399. ' Vady's Accounts, 1445 — 1446 ; Burton's Accounts, 1446 — 1447. (WillisandClark,vol.i.pp.393— 395) 3 Ibid. ; Eton Audit Roll, 1448— 1449, " arras /r(7 le closet domini Regis." * Burton's Accounts, 1446 — 1447. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 396.) D 2 36 SCHEME FOR BUILDING. the ensuing eight months require a great quantity of fresh stone, and the continuous services of forty freemasons and seventy other workmen. After Michaelmas, a dozen carpenters, earn- ing sixpence a day, were to be employed on the roof, and twenty-four other carpenters and carvers, earning three shillings and four pence a week, upon the stalls. Inasmuch, however, as sixty freemasons and twenty-four hard-hewers of Kent were also to be employed for a whole year from Michaelmas, it is evident that the stone-work was far from finished. Most of the money necessary for building the church was to come from the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, but several additional sums were given or promised for the year 1448- 1449. The King gave over 380/. from his own coffers, Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, gave over 33/., and Waynflete more than double that amount. The Marquess of Suffolk, who appears to have been the Founder's chief adviser in all matters relating to the buildings at Eton, contributed no less than 6661., and the Duke of Somerset undertook to maintain five masons for two years.' The document containing the estimate for materials and labour likely to be wanted in 1448 and 1449 is accompanied by three other papers of like date, giving for the first time a comprehensive account of the King's intentions with regard to the buildings at Eton. One of them is headed: — "The appointment made by the King oure al soverain lord for the edification of the quere of his college roial of Our Blessed Lady of Eton as touchyng every demension of the same quere, the vij day of Februarie the yere of the reigne of King Henry the Sext the xxvj." Another, bearing the royal sign manual in two places, prescribes the dimensions of the western part of the Church, and the third, which is also signed by the King, gives the dimensions which he had appointed for " the housing of his College." These manuscripts taken together ' Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 398 — 401. THE KING'S " WILL." 37 seem to have constituted the first draft of a material portion of a formal document generally known as the " will " of King Henry the Sixth, which follows them almost word for word, except when it omits a characteristic note stating that the proposed choir at Eton would be three feet longer, and two feet broader than " the quere of Wynchestre College at Oxenford," and that its walls would be twenty feet higher, and its pinnacles ten feet longer.' This " will " is in fact nothing more than an expression of the King's intentions with regard to his two great foundations at Eton and Cambridge.^ One of the three original copies of this important document is preserved in the Library at Eton, and bears the Great Seal of England, that of the Duchy of Lancaster, and three other official seals, as well as the royal sign-manual. It is dated at Eton, the I2th of March, 1448, and begins by reciting the King's previous conveyance to a body of feoffees of lands, rents, &c., yielding nearly 3,400/. a year, which formerly belonged to the Duchy of Lancaster. The feoffees were certain archbishops, bishops, nobles, clerks, and others, in whom Henry VI. reposed special confidence ; but Waynflete was entrusted with special powers ; in a passage which, for the beauty of its language and for the evidence that it affords of the relations between the King and the Bishop, shall be given entire : — " Furthermore, for the final perfourmyng of my said wil to be put effectuelly in execucion, I, consideryng the grete ' Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 351, 352, 357. ^ The entire " will " has been printed in Nichols's Royal Wills, and in Haywood and Wright's Statutes, and large extracts from it have been inserted in Cooper's Annals of Cambridge, and in Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor, all alike taken from a very erroneous transcript in the British Museum, made by Baker, the historian of St. John's College, Cambridge. The original iVIS. is a beautiful speci- men of calligraphy, more easily legible, in fact, than many early productions of the printing press. Mr. Clark gives a carefully revised copy of those portions which relate to the buildings of Eton and King's.- 38 THE KING'S " WILL.' discrecion of the seide worshepful fader in God, William nowe Bisshop of Wynchestre, his high trought and fervent zele which at alle tymes he hath hadde and hath unto my weel, and whiche I have founde and proved in hym, and for the grete and hool confidence whiche I have unto hym for thoo causes, wol that he, not oonly as surveour but also as executor and director of my seid wil, be privee unto alle and every execucion of the perfourmyng of my same wil, and that his consente in any wise be hadde thereto." Another characteristic passage may also be quoted : — " And that this iny seid' wil in every poynt before re- herced may the more effectually be executed, I not oonly pray and desire but also exorte in Crist, require, and charge alle and every of my seid feffees, myn executours, and surveour or surveours in the vertue of the aspercion of Christe's blessed blode and of his peyneful passion, that they havyng God and myne entent oonly before their eyen, not lettyng for drede or favour of any persoune lyving of what estat degree or condicion that he be, truely, feithfully, and diligently execute my same wil and every part thereof, as they wol answere before the blessed and dredeful visage of our Lord Jhesu in his most fereful and last dome, when every man shal most strictly be examined and demed after his demeritees." The main object of the " will " was to order the feoffees to pay i,ooo/. a year to] the Provost of each of the two new Colleges for the next twenty years, and so much longer as the buildings should remain unfinished ; at the same time, specifying the exact designs chosen by the Founder for the buildings at Cambridge and at Eton. The latter alone concern the present eaquiry ; and even with respect to them it is unnecessary to enter into minute detail, ^ the scheme was soon abandoned, or rather modified, by Henry VI. him- self. The document is interesting, however, as showing his ideal of the requirements of a great seat of learning and GENERAL PLAN. 39 piety, and as illustrating certain provisions in the statutes, which would otherwise be unintelligible. First it may be remarked that there was then no fixed model to which all collegiate buildings should conform. William of Wykeham's twin foundations differ from one another in appearance and shape as much as they do from all others. So too Henry VI. did not attempt to erect both his Colleges on one plan. In each case he had to be guided by the nature and disposition of the ground. The low situation of Eton rendered it very liable to inundation, and precautions had to be taken against this danger ; partly by " enhauncyng," or rais- ing, the ground to certain specified levels, and partly by turning "the water at Baldewyne Brigge .... overthwart into the river of Thamyse," by a ditch forty feet in breadth. The precinct of the College was to be 3,690 feet in circum- ference, bounded by a stone wall stretching from Baldwin's Bridge along the water's side to the spot now known as " Sixth Form Bench," thence to a new bridge on the high road from Windsor to Slough, and so, parallel with that road, back to the starting point in the south-western corner. The principal gateway was to be on the north-west (on the site of the house now occupied by Mr. Cockshott), and was to give access to an outer court. On the right (or south) side of this was to be built an almshouse containing sixteen rooms, besides a kitchen, a buttery, and offices. Some gardens for the poor men may be approximately placed on part of the site of Weston's Yard. On the opposite (or north) side of the outer court, were to be erected the collegiate bakehouse, brewhouse, garners, stables, and hayhouse, as at Winchester, " with chambers for the steuardes, auditours, and other lerned counsell and ministres of the seid College." Here was also to be the infirmary. Nearly opposite to the outer gatehouse, Henry VI. intended to build a second gateway, leading to the main quadrangle of the College, and surmounted by a fair tower. The vaulting of this gateway was to be of stone, as was also to be that of 40 THE KING'S " WILL." the two rooms over it, one of which was to serve as a muniment-room, and the other as a treasury for such plate and jewels as were not in constant use.' The area of the great quadrangle was to measure 1 5 5 feet north and south, from the gateway to the Hall, and 230 feet east and west, so that it would have been more than three times the size of the Cloister which now occupies part of the site intended for it. The buildings surrounding it were to have been in two floors, with a series of small towers on either side, some of which were to serve as staircases to the upper rooms, and others doubtless as " garderobes." The Library was to be situated on the east side of the quadrangle looking over the gardens towards the river. The Hall and the Pantry were to occupy their present positions on the south side ; but over the staircase leading to them there was to be a turret, probably for a bell. One of the bay-windows of the Hall was to look into the quadrangle ; the other, as at present, into the kitchen yard. The Provost's Lodging was to extend for a length of seventy feet on both floors, from behind the upper end of the Hall to a corner tower situated close to the north-east angle of the new Church. Exactly opposite to this, but only on the ground floor, was to be a school-room of similar length adjoining the gateway. The west side was not intended to have any strongly-defined architectural feature. Finally, in the centre of the quadrangle was to stand a conduit, " goodly devised to the ease and profit of the seid College." The Founder did not at this time contemplate the erection of a single long dormitory. The Scholars, Choristers, and Commensals, were to be distributed among the rooms on the ground floor ; but a proviso was made that in each room there should be at least three senior scholars, endued with some sort of monitorial authority. All the boys who had not completed their fourteenth year, were to sleep two in a bed. Each of the Fellows and the Head-Master were to occupy separate rooms ' Statute XXXV. PROPOSED CLOISTER. ^\ on the upper floor. To the Chaplains, Usher, and Clerks was assigned one room for every two persons. All the occupants of the upper floor were specially charged to be careful not to in- convenience those below them by spilling wine, beer, or water.' The site of the present School-Yard and part of Weston's Yard was to be occupied by an oblong cloister, communicating with the western side of the great quadrangle, but not giving access to any of the chambers. Henry VI. probably borrowed the idea of this cloister from New College, though with some modifications, for he ordered that it should be vaulted in stone, and embattled on both sides. The northern walk, 200 feet long, was to be erected somewhat to the north of the site now occupied by the range of buildings containing Lower School and Lower Chamber : the western walk, leading to the northern aisle of the new Church, was to run parallel to the high road, upon a site now partly occupied by Upper School. In the middle of this side, and projecting beyond it, a great tower, 140 feet high, was to rise far above the roofs of all the neighbouring buildings. Disregarding the example of the monastic establishments which used their respective cloisters as places of instruction, Henry VI. had resolved to provide his College with a regular school-room. The Eton Cloister was, however, occasionally to be the scene of public disputations in grammar between the Scholars.^ It was also to be the burying-place of the Provosts and of all other mem- bers of the College down to the Scholars. The Commensals and the thirteen Servitors were to be buried either in the Cloister or under the green sward which it enclosed.3 Between the southern walk of the Cloister and the Church, there was to be a space of thirty-eight feet planted with "certaine trees and floures behoveful and convenient for the service of the seide Church." The cemetery being consecrated ground, could not be ' Statute xxxvi. I ^ Ibid, xxxvii. ^ Ibid. xiv. I 42 THE KING'S " WILL." converted to secular uses ; but on the completion of the buildings, its position with regard to the Church was to be different. The old Church stood in the midst, or on the south side, of it ; whereas the new Church was to form its northern boundary. In this cemetery the parishioners of Eton were to be buried : their baptisms and marriages were to be performed in the porch of the new Church, projecting from the western- most bay but one of the south aisle. The Church itself was to be several feet longer than the present building, and very different from it in form and general appearance. In the first place, it was to have a nave and aisles, as well as a choir ; but, on the other hand, the choir was to be about two-thirds only of its present length, and about three-quarters of its present width. Eight feet at the extreme eastern end were to be screened off as a separate chapel, and the great east window was to consist of only seven lights. The choir was to be lighted by seven windows on each side, but their comparative narrowness forbade more than four lights in each. The main walls were to be eighty feet in elevation, and their long horizontal lines were to be broken by a series of pinnacles, rising twenty feet above each of the buttresses. There was to be a double vestry on the north side of the choir, looking over the Cloister, and connected with the western side of the quadrangle by a covered passage for the use of the clergy and singers. A rood-loft under the choir- arch, and thirty-two stalls in the choir, were to be copied from those in St. Stephen's Chapel at Westminster. The choir was, of course, intended for the members of the College, and the nave for the almsmen and the ordinary parishioners. Any one who is at all familiar with the present aspect of Eton will at once see how entirely this design, so formally sanctioned by Henry VI., differs from the actual plan of the collegiate buildings. The Cellar, the Hall over it, the Pantry, and the Kitchen, are indeed the only portions which correspond with the provisions of the King's " will." The very sites of CHANGE OF DESIGN. 43 most of the other buildings have been changed, though an exception may be made in favour of the foundation-stone of the Church, which was not to be " removed, touched nor stered in any wise." It doubtless still lies half-way across the choir, opposite to the Jacobean monument of Provost Murray. The utter discrepancy between the proportions enjoined by the original design, and those of the present Church, has been a source of perplexity to antiquaries in the past, and, even after Mr. J. W. Clark's minute investigations, some points remain obscure. A solution of the main problem is, however, to be found in the discovery that the Founder's " will " sets forth a scheme intermediate in date between that already adopted for the collegiate buildings, and that eventually adopted for the choir of the Church. Although Henry VI. does not appear to have ever executed a formal revocation of his " will," he scon changed his plans. A strict adherence to it would have involved the entire demo- lition of the northern and eastern sides of the existing Cloister, to make room for the larger quadrangle intended ; and it is possible that some wise counsellor may have dissuaded him from a course which would have proved very inconvenient to the Fellows, Scholars, and others. At any rate, that part of the scheme which related to the " housing " of the College was tacitly abandoned, or reserved for future consideration. On the other hand, the Founder resolved to enlarge the Church. Taking up the paper which had served as the first draft of his " will," he cancelled some of the figures and added others, apparently with his own hand, signing the documents again with his name in full : — fy^ wemyt' 1CU.6> The effect of the alterations would have been to increase the length of the choir and the nave by fifteen feet apiece. 44 CHANGE OF DESIGN'. their breadth by three feet, and the breadth of the aisles by a foot. Inasmuch as no change was directed in the number of buttresses, bays, and windows, the contemplated enlarge- ment could not have been carried out without the sacrifice of all that had already been done towards building the church, unless indeed some of the mullions and other dressed stones could have been rendered available.' This sacrifice was actually made, but, apparently, not until after the King had once more altered the design. As time went on, the enthusiasm of the Founder increased, and he resolved to make the Collegiate Church of Eton the grandest memorial of his munificence and zeal for religion. His original scheme contemplated the erection of a stately pile ; but in altering it for the second time, he aimed at producing a church which should rank among the finest specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in his kingdom. William of Wykeham was still his pattern and rival, partly indeed as the founder of New College, but more as the archi- tect of the Cathedral Church of Winchester. In January 1449, the King sent Master Roger Keys, the master of the works at Eton, with a retinue of three servants, to Salisbury and Winchester, to take measurements of the choirs and naves of those celebrated churches, and, a few weeks later. Keys went up to London to submit a design {portraturam) to him, as well as to arrange for a supply of Hudleston stone from Yorkshire. It is not unreasonable to believe that this design was definitely approved and adopted. A third set of measurements for the Collegiate Church of Eton is contained in a paper, not signed, but expressly styled " the Kynge's owne avyse,'\ which affords the only explan- ation of the shape which the building has actually assumed. ' If the attestation by the Mar- quess of Suffolk and William Wayn- flete, Bishop of Winchester, refers to the corrections rather than to the original draft, the King must have made them between the 12th of March, the date of the "will," and the 2nd of June, the date of De la Pole's elevation to the dignity of Duke of Suffolk. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. 45 The length and breadth of the present choir correspond closely with those ordered in it ; as do also the buttresses and the eight windows of five lights apiece on either side. So again the three short panels in the east wall under the " grete gable wyndowe of nine days " exactly make up the length prescribed for the altar of the Lady Chapel, which must therefore have occupied the site of the present Holy Table. The pedestals on either side of it are not mentioned in the Founder's directions, but he did order two similar pedestals for supporting figures of the Blessed Virgin and of St. Nicholas at the two ends of the high altar, which was to be placed some twelve feet from the east wall. This altar was to measure no less than eighteen feet in length, and was to be surmounted by an elaborate reredos containing figures of our Lord and His Apostles. The upper stalls were to be close against the walls in the western part of the choir ; but they would not have been so lofty as the present stalls, and the Provost would have sat six feet further east- ward than he does now. Immediately behind his stall was to be a staircase leading up to the rood-loft, which was also to serve as an organ-gallery. Thus there is good authority for the present position of the organ. As in both the former designs, so in this latest one, the King prescribed a nave, with an aisle on either side, but he enlarged the dimensions considerably, and gave further particulars. Thus we find that there was to be a window at the eastern end of each aisle, with an altar under it, and two other altars in a line with these, under the rood-loft. It is remarkable that, although buttresses were ordered for the choir, there is no distinct mention of any for the nave, or rather for the aisles. The inference to be drawn from this might be, that the King did not contemplate vaulting the nave in stone ; but, on the other hand, the omission may have been due to the comparative remoteness of time at which this part of the building could be put in hand. It is 46 THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. unlikely that Henry VI. would have been satisfied with any roof in his Collegiate Church, that was not of the first order of excellence. To many readers mere figures will not convey any definite idea of size ; and the dimensions of the proposed nave may perhaps be best illustrated by a comparison with two or three existing structures. Dismissing from consideration such churches as Chichester, Kendal, and Coventry, whose great breadth is divided into four or five aisles, we should remark that there are only two churches in England, of the same plan, which surpass King Henry's last design in width. One — the Metropolitan Church of York — Was already in existence ; the other is the masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren. The Gothic Cathedral surpasses the design for Eton in the width both of its nave and of its aisles ; St. Paul's barely equals it in this respect, and is actually wider only in consequence of the greater thickness of' piers which is always found in Renaissance architecture. There is, indeed, one nave whose length and breadth correspond almost exactly with the measurements given in King Henry's "owne avyse,'' and it happens to be that of the mother church of Lincoln, but there the aisles are several feet narrower than those at Eton would have been. Of course the style of the two churches is quite different, and the Collegiate Church would not have had a triforium. Moreover the nave of Lincoln is divided into seven bays instead of eight, and in the aisles there are two small windows to each bay, instead of one large window. The building which most legitimately suggests some analogy with the proposed Church of Eton, is that which was afterwards completed at Cambridge. King's College Chapel so entirely overpowers the existing choir of Eton that a comparison between them might seem absurd ; but if both structures had been carried out according to their common founder's last design, the case would have been ^i>;^^>ii»;ii^i^.>iii!:»i^^^^ Dll i? ^ < fc, j I I (ifij/ij) < CD Z ^^ o ^ o O W O « o ' w I o s w § ►J w ^ssssss^sssssssssssessse^sic^is^issssssessi^^ THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. 47 reversed. The nave at Eton was to have been about thirty feet longer than that at King's, though not exceeding it in breadth. Its detached piers would have broken up the long lines of wall more effectually than the vaulting-shafts do at King's, and the broad aisles separated from the nave by lofty arches would have been an important part of the design, instead of being merely a series of low chapels enclosed between the buttresses. Such a plan would have involved much greater difficulties in construction, as the central weight of the roof would have been double the distance from the supports. The effect would have been lighter, but at the same time even more impressive. With- out transepts, presbytery, or distant chapels, to excite the imagination, the Collegiate Church of Eton would have been smaller than most of our cathedrals ; the eye would have taken in the whole idea at a glance ; but the unity of the style and the simplicity of the plan, would have produced an effect of grandeur hardly to be equalled. " The Kinge's owne avyse " does not allude to the turning of the high road through Eton, which would have become necessary before the erection of the body of the Collegiate Church, which was to have extended to a distance of some sixty feet to the north of it. On the other hand, it specifies the material to be used for the walls of the choir, that is to say, Teynton stone, with " hethstone " and flint, " leyd and couched with good and mighty morter," for the main part, and a mixture of Teynton stone and Yorkshire stone for the basement and for the upper stage. The use of chalk, brick, and Reigate stone was expressly forbidden. It appears ac- cordingly from the accounts that stone from Teynton in Oxfordshire was purchased, for the first time, in 1448, and that in the early part of the following year the King ob- tained a grant of part of the quarry at Hudleston in Yorkshire. In point of fact, however, Teynton stone was used for the lower courses and some ornamental work, Hudleston stone 48 THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. for the main part of the walls up to the level of the transoms across the windows, and Kentish rag for the uppermost stage, and for the two upper stages of most of the buttresses. Payments for iron-work for the windows of the new choir in 1458, and specifically for its eastern window in the follo-jving year, seem to show that by the latter date at any rate the existing choir was practically finished, the construction of it having lasted about ten years.' The exact correspondence of the lower courses of stone in the Church at Eton with those specified in "the Kinge's owne avyse " proves the existing walls to be those therein ordered to be built ; and clauses which prescribe the digging of the new " growndes," or foundations, outside the old ones, taken together with the accounts for work done continuously on the Church during the seven preceding years, show that an almost completed building must have been demolished, and a new one begun upon its site, soon after the date of that document. That similar changes were not introduced into the plan for King's College Chapel, which, with only one unimportant difference, agrees with the dimensions given in the " will," is probably due to the fact that Cambridge was far away from the Founder's favourite residence. The great sewer must probably be referred to the time of Henry VI., and deserves notice as having for four centuries exhibited one of the most perfect systems of drainage in England. Its principle consisted of a periodical discharge of water, which rushed through an enormous drain all round the College with such force that it made its way from under Baldwin's Bridge into the Thames in the course of a few minutes.^ The early building-accounts at Eton make frequent men- 1 Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 405, 426—428. anti per duos dies circa ripas reparando et obturando foramina ' It is mentioned in an Audit 1 juxta aquam ut purgaretur cloaca Roll of 1492 or 1493. " Uni labor- per cursum ague, vj''- " ST. JAMES'S HOSPITAL. 49 tion of the " Almeshouse," but it would appear that it was Httle more than a granary, temporarily fitted up for the use of the poor men. Nor was the infirmary ever erected. Any scholar or chorister who fell ill was entrusted to the care of some worthy matron in the town, and the invalid's commons were allowed in money.^ One of the houses in Eton purchased for the College by the King from the Jourdelay family, and still called Jourdelay's Place, proved very convenient, while the new buildings were incomplete, for the accommodation of strangers and horses.^ Another grant of property about this period made permanent provision for the wants of the Provost or any Fellow who had occasion to go up to London on business. During the early years of the College, all difficult questions on matters of finance, architecture, or domestic administra- tion, were referred to the decision of the Founder, and the Provost necessarily had to make frequent journeys to the capital. The College of course paid his expenses, and for some time hired a house for him from the Abbot of Chertsey.3 The King, however, soon gave him the means of maintaining a position more suitable to his dignity, by granting to Eton the leper hospital of St. James, in the fields of Westminster.-t The residence till then occupied by the Master (whose office was to be suppressed), though let for a short time to the Earl of Suffolk,^ was soon fitted ' Eton Audit Roll, 1448— 1449. " /« denariis solutis Alicie Water pro custodia Johannis Dorset., unius scholaris CoUegiiinfirnii, etexisten- iis in villa per v septimanas, et WillelmiA llerto7i alterius scholaris infirmi et existentis in villa per tina/n septimanam, et Johannis Rede tenius choriste existentis in villa per ij septimanas, una cum prandio eorundem, omnibus computatis in denarii's, v\\f- viij''- " " Ibid. 1448 — 1449, and undated Roll, probably 1454 — 1455. 3 Eton Audit Roll, 1444 — 1445, 1446— 1447, 1447— 1448, 1449- 1450. The yearly rent was 40J. * 30th of October, 28 Henry VI. (1449)- 5 Eton Audit Roll, 1456— 1457. This title was applied to John da la Pole by the Bursars, although all the honours of his father, William, Duke of Suffolk, had been forfeited in 1450. He paid 6/. ly. i,d. as rent. so PARLIAMENTARY GRANTS. up and furnished for the use of the Provost. Westbury was often obhged to follow the King to places far more distant than London, especially when Parliament was sitting. Thus we find him going to St. Edmundsbury and Coventry, as well as to Westminster, perhaps with the object of canvass- ing the votes of the members.' At any rate, the College had to pay for schedules containing lists of the various knights and burgesses who occupied seats in the House of Commons.^ The College was exempted from successive subsidies, Acts of Resumption, and the like, and the Founder was careful to obtain parliamentary ratification of the various grants which he had made from time to time by letters patent.-'' A very extensive confirmation of property and privileges was made in 1446, and the College caused it to be transcribed with great care, paying i/. 6s. 8d. to a certain William Abell for ornamenting it with an illumination, which may be classed amongst the most interesting and beautiful specimens of English art in the fifteenth century.^ The King is represented in a kneeling attitude, within the initial letter of his own name, holding his charter in front of an altar ; while behind him appear representatives of the three estates of the realm. The Commons are saying: — " Prient les Communes^' to which the Lords Spiritual and Temporal add : — " Et tious le prions ausi." Foremost among the peers kneels Archbishop Stafford, and immediately behind him Cardinals Beaufort and Kemp, distinguished by their red hats. The sister Colleges at Eton and Cambridge' had been established several years before their royal Founder granted to them the Arms which they still respectively bear. The • Eton Audit Roll, 1456— 1457- ' Ibid., undated, probably 1454 — 1455. " Willelmo Okeden pro scriptura sedulc noininuvi militum burgejtsium Parliaiiienti, \\\f- \rf- " ^ Rolls of Parliament, vol. v. passim. ■• Eton Audit Roll, 1447— 1448. "■ Solutiim est Willelmo Abell il- liiminanii actus Parliamenti, x.xvj'- viij''- " ETON HERALDRY. 51 letters by which he did so, attested by the Great Seal of England, are preserved among the muniments at both places. In the case of Eton, Henry VI. assigned as Arms "on a field sable three lily-flowers argent, intending that our newly-founded College, lasting for ages to come, whose per- petuity we wish to be signified by the stability of the sable colour, shall bring forth the brightest flowers redolent of every kind of knowledge. ... To which also that we may impart something of royal nobility, which may declare the work truly royal and illustrious, we have resolved that that portion of the Arms, which by royal right belong to us in the kingdoms of France and England, be placed on the chief of the shield, per pale aziire with a flower of the French, and gides with a leopard passant or!' The grant to King's followed this grant word for word, except that three roses argent were substituted for the same number of lily-flowers ; and the symbolism was the same in both.' The most curious fact, however, connected with these Arms is, that both Colleges had been using somewhat similar bearings for several years previous to the date of these grants (January i, 1448).. This was ascertained a few years ago with respect to King's, from a unique impression of the ' Both these grants are printed I pp. 47, 362. in Bentley's Exxerpta Historica, I E 2 52 ETON HERALDRY. original seal among the muniments ; but the first Eton seal has somehow escaped attention. From an examina- tion of this seal, it appears that the Arms used during Waynflete's tenure of the Provostship are identical with those subsequently granted by Henry VI. ; ■ but the original shield of King's College shows on the field a crozier issuing out of a mitre between two lily-flowers. Thus the College at Cambridge bore the emblems of its joint patrons — the lilies of the Blessed Virgin and the episcopal ornaments of St. Nicholas ; while the College at Eton, which was dedicated to the former alone, bore her lilies only.= The early shield of King's must have been more pleasing to churchmen than to heralds, who were then still favour- able to simple bearings. Its obvious want of symmetry was probably the reason of its being abolished, and the three roses substituted. But with the mitre and crozier vanished also the whole symbolism of the patron Saints, and a new meaning had to be discovered for the Eton lily-flowers as well as for the Cambridge roses. Both were therefore declared to be emblematical of bright flowers of learning. This fact of the Eton Arms having been in use before the formal grant in 1449, which was more than two years after Waynflete's resignation of the Provostship, will explain his adoption of the lilies on a chief of augmentation to his paternal shield. He gave his own Arms to his great found- ' See p. 69, and the woodcut on p. 15. ^ It should be remarked that the shape of the charges in the Eton shield has sadly degenerated from that represented in the grant of Arms, and the original seal. In both of these they are lily-flowers {lilioriim /lores) ; while now they are generally drawn with wiry stalks, and with leaves on either side. So extensively indeed has this corrupt form prevailed, that Sir Bernard Burke, and Mr. Boutell, have described the lilies as "sHpped and leaved." Both these compilers have fallen into the further error of describing the ground as azure instead of sable. This is the more extraordinary in Mr. Boutell's case, inasmuch as he mentions the original grant as " one of the most beautiful speci- mens of blazonry in existence." PAPAL BULLS. S3 ation at Oxford, and the Eton lilies may consequently still be seen at Magdalen College, Oxford.' Arms were also granted as signs of " nobility " to the masters of the works, or architects, of the sister Colleges at Eton and Cambridge. The surname of Roger Keys of Eton was provocative of " canting " heraldry, and three keys were accordingly assigned to him and his brother.'' Nicholas Close of Cambridge came in for a combination of the lilies of Eton and the roses of King's. 3 The College had occasion to seek further bulls from the successors of Eugenius IV. in the papal see. Nicholas V. granted a confirmation of various privileges,* and further- more authorised the Provost to depute three priests of the College to hear confessions on the different festivals of the Blessed Virgin, with power to commute acts of penance, except vows of pilgrimage to Rome or Santiago of Compo- stella.s Pius II., however, was not so gracious. He did, indeed, confirm the Indulgences accorded to pilgrims who visited Eton at the feast of the Assumption ; but he ham- pered this concession with restrictions which rendered it almost valueless. Disregarding the perpetual force assigned to the latest bull of Eugenius IV., he reverted to the earlier form, and provided that three-fourths of the offerings of the penitents should be devoted to the defence of Christendom.^ The College seems to have received the bull with pleasure- ' Chandler's Life of Waynflete, p. 30. " Bentley's Excerpla Historica, p. 49. = Ibid. p. 364. ■t Bull at Eton, dated 12 Kalends of May, 1447 ; Ninth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Appendix i. p. 351 ; Eton Audit Roll, 1446— 1447. "/ra regardo data A'icholao Wyl- Itighby pro laboribus suis in curia Homana pro ncgotiis Collegii, cs- " ; Ibid. 1448 — 1449. " ^" denariis liberatis et salutis per Nicholaicm , Wyllughby cuidani nuncio misso Rome pro magna carta confirma- tionis possessionum et privilegiorum Collegii per Nicholaum ex gratia divina Papain facta et concessa, x"- " s Bull at Eton, dated Kalends of June, 1450. ^ Bull at Eton, dated November 30, I4S9- 54 WILLIAM WEYli. and to have caused an account of its contents to be hung- up in the Church for the information of visitors.' Neverthe- less the number of pilgrims dechned rapidly, and the feast of the Assumption became merely the occasion of a solemn function in the Church, and of a grand dinner in the Hall, for which an additional sum of 4/. or 5/. was annually allowed, down to the time of Edward VI. ° One of the earliest Fellows of Eton, William Weye, was not satisfied with the ordinary routine of college life, and undertook at least three journeys for the benefit of his soul. His description of the countries which he visited forms a most interesting volume, highly characteristic of the author and the age in which he lived. 3 The first pilgrimage of which he has left any account was directed to the popular shrine of Santiago of Compostella, and was duly performed in 1456. His next journey was likely to be more adventurous^ and his absence from Eton so long that it might have en- tailed the loss of his Fellowship. Henry VI., however, took precautions against a strict enforcement of the statutes, and wrote a letter mentioning Weye's desire " to passe overe the see on peregrinage as to Rome, to Jerusalem, and to other holy places, and so humbly hath he soughte us to graunt unto hym our especial licence so to doo ; We, having tendre consideration unto his blessed purpos and entent, have licencied hym to execute his said peregrinage, and wol that at suche tyme as he schal retourne unto our College that he be accepted there as a Felawe of the same, in like wyse and fourme as he now stondeth therin, and that ■■ Eton Audit Book, 1459—1460. " Fro scriphcra rotulorum indul- geniiarum, vj=' viij''' Et pro fact lira uniiis casiile pro dicto rottilo adpen- dendum in ecclesia, ij^ . . . hi re- gardo dato nuncio domini regis portanti bullam de indulgetitiis, Eton Audit Rolls and Books, passim. ' The Itineraries of William Weye printed from the original MS. with an introduction by the Rev. George Williams, B.D. for the Roxburghc Club. WILLIAM WE YE. 55 the yerely pension with other deutes growyng unto hym during his seid peregrinage, within our said College, be observed oonly, and kept to his propre use unto his said retournyng."' Weye started in 1458, and the line of his itinerary to Rome may be traced through Calais, Ghent, Mechlin, Aachen, Coblentz, Worms, Bruchsal, Ulm, Hesterwang, Meran, Trent, Verona, Mirandola, Bologna, Florence, Siena, and Viterbo. From Rome he turned northwards, but by a different road, through Terni, Spoleto, Assisi, Perugia, and Ravenna, whence he went by sea to Venice. From that great port he sailed by Corfu, Crete, Rhodes, and Cyprus to Jaffa, a town which he believed to be so called after its founder, Japhet. He stayed only thirteen days in Palestine, but he managed to see Bethlehem, Jericho, and most of the Holy Places. There were no less than twenty-seven English pilgrims at Jerusalem, and Weye seems to have preached to them in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That wonderful building was then, as now, the scene of perpetual strife between the members of conflicting sects, of whom Weye enumerates no less than twelve. He retraced his steps pretty closely, only omitting his detour to Rome ; and he got back to Eton in thirty-nine weeks from the time of his departure. Weye must have been well pleased with this pilgrimage, for he undertook another in 1462, at the mature age of seventy. On this journey, he was obliged to make two departures from the direct road to Venice, first by going from Maastricht to Trier and Metz, in order to keep out of the way of a war which was raging on the Rhine between two bishops ; and again by going from Basel to Meran by Constance, Landeck, and Nauders, so as not to set foot in the Austrian dominions, which then lay under a Papal Interdict. From Trent he took the beautiful, but now almost neglected, road to Venice through Pergine and Bassano. ' Eton Register, vol. i. f. 46. S6 JOHN BLAKMAN. Weye was fortunate enough to reach Venice in time for the festival of St. Mark, and he was struck with wonder at the gorgeous ceremonial of that day. His account of it is a more valuable contribution to history than his minute enumeration of the localities and relics which he saw in the Holy Land. Not the least interesting part of Weye's book consists of practical advice to future travellers, including a phrase-book of Greek and English, and a table of foreign exchanges. He also made a map of the Holy Land, though not from personal observation. His book abounds in examples of memoria technica which would now be repudiated by most Eton boys. The exact date at which Weye resigned his Fellowship is not certain, though he may have done so in consequence of the troubles under Edward IV. All we know is, that he adopted the rule of St. Augustine and died a monk of Edyngton in 1476. He gave several relics to that house, and doubtless also to Eton. Some plate is mentioned in old inventories .as having been presented by him. It has all disappeared, as have also the MSS. which he gave to the library, with a single exception. John Blakman, the only other Fellow of Eton at this period who appears as an author, also became a monk, joining the Carthusian Order. In his account of Henry VI. he makes mention of the deep interest which that prince took in every- thing that concerned his foundation. In selecting Fellows we are told that he looked more to their learning than to their musical acquirements. The Founder, who had provided so liberally for the fabric of the College, was also as anxious to secure the best " living stones." Whenever he met any of the scholars in Windsor Castle, on a visit to members of his retinue, he used to exhort them to follow the path of virtue. He usually added a small present of money, saying : — " Be good boys, meek and docile, and servants of the Lord." On the other hand, he did not encourage their 14'ARS OF THE ROSES. 57 presence at Court, dreading the effect on their morals of the vicious example of his courtiers.' This account of Eton College during the reign of its Founder may fitly close with mention of the joy with which its members received " two messengers coming from our Lady the Queen to inform the College of the birth of a prince." " Yet this very event, which seemed so auspicious at the moment, is said to have been the immediate cause of the civil war which ensued. The Duke of York, finding himself debarred from even the reversion of the Crown, aspired to obtaining it without wait- ing for the death of Henry VI. It can hardly be doubted that most Etonians were loyal to the cause of the Founder. ' Hearne's Otterbourne, &c., vol. i. p. 296. The Earl of Ashburnham has a copy of Higden's Polychroni- con, which was given by John Blakman to the Carthusian Priory ofWithatn, in Somersetshire. The initial letters of the different books transcribed in it are illuminated with the arms of Eton College. Eighth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, Appendix iii. p. 105. " Eton Audit Roll, 1452—1453. " In regardo data ij nunctis venicn- tibus a domina Regina ad certifi- candum Collegium de nativitate principis, xiij'- iiij''' " ,1 Ml .|V'">" Iron Handle in the Gallery. ^.^■^!y.^.^Cg:^r^a^r3»r3Sga>'=*y.^i«^= [CHAPTER t^SSSrSS&SSrS^mSiSS^lS^^i^l^^. T^ I461 — 1482. Success of the Yorkist Party — Attempted Suppression of Eton College — The Struggle for Existence— Death of Henry VI.— Earl Rivers— The College Seal — Completion of the Church — Definite Re-establishment of the College — Death of Westbury— William Paston— Provost Bost and Jane Shore— Funeral of Edward IV. HE news of the rout of the Lancastrian forces at Mortimer's Cross, and of the subsequent failure of Queen Margaret's attempt to enter London in February 1 46 1, must have caused the utmost consternation at Eton. Although the members of the College had not taken up arms for the Founder, and could hardly be brought to trial for having acknowledged him as their king, they had every reason to anticipate trouble, individually and collectively. They therefore acted with more wisdom than courage, in at once submitting themselves to the chief of the victorious faction. One or more of them went to meet the young Duke of York on his march towards London, and obtained from him a written promise of protection. This curious document was discovered at Eton a few years ago, and it may now be seen in one of the glass cases in the Library. Although dated from London, on the 27th of Febru- ary, it was probably signed in the suburbs, as historians state THE DUKE OF YORK. 59 that the Duke of York did not enter his future capital until the following day. The autograph signature is interesting, as being one which could have been used only during the few weeks that elapsed between Edward's succession to the dukedom and title of York, and his assumption of the crown of England. " Be it knowen that We Edward by the grace of God of Englande, Fraunce, and Irlande vray and just heire, Due of York, Erl of the march and Ulvestre, have by thees our lettres taken and receyved the Provoste and felaship of the Collage of Eyton into our defense and saveguard. Ther- for We desir and pray al thoos personns to whom theese our lettres shal bee shewed, and evry of tham, that thay ne noon of tham hurte trouble ne vexe the said Provost or felaship their tenants or servants, neithre tham in their lyveloods, goods, or catalls, robbe despoyle ner vexe other- wise than by ryght lawe and good conscience be, ev thay wol have our good lordeship. Geven undre our signet at London, the xxvij day of Feverer, the yere of our Lord mcccclx." Any feelings of security inspired by this document must have been rudely disturbed by the proceedings of the Parliament in November, which pronounced the grants of the three Lancastrian Kings null and void. Many exceptions were made to this sweeping enactment, but Eton was not specifically mentioned among them.' The new King so far kept his word, that, a year after his accession, he exempted the College from all fines, scutages, and the like, and re-granted ■ Rolls of Parliament, vol. v. pp. I the Exchequer, Q.R. (Public Record 463 — 475; Ancient Miscellanea of \ Office) ^A/i. 6o UNION WITH WINDSOR. to it many of its estates." He bestowed the remainder on other foundations, apparently without any definite guiding principle.^ As time went on, Edward's jealousy of Henry VI. increased, and he resolved to discredit everything that could redound to the fame of his dangerous rival. Personal predilections may in some cases have combined with state- craft in influencing his actions. If he was " enclined more to the advauncement of vaine pompe to feede the sence, then to the promotion of verie vertue," he must certainly have felt more interest in the " canons, vicares, singing-men, organists, and choristers" of his own chapel than in the poor scholars and almsmen of Eton.s Anyhow, he conceived the idea of entirely suppressing the noble institution which Henry VI. had founded " for the increase of learning," and of annexing it to St. George's, at Windsor. With this object, he represented to the Pope that the buildings at Eton were incomplete, and the College unlikely to be of any use, which was obviously true, inasmuch as he himself had cut off its principal sources of revenue. Pius II. had no special interest in the matter, and readily granted a bull abolish- ing the very name of Eton College. He made provision, however, for the vested rights of the existing members of the disestablished body, by transferring them to Windsor, on an equal footing with persons holding similar positions there. The site of the College, moreover, being consecrated ground, was not to be turned to profane uses.+ The Dean and Chapter of Windsor naturally offered no opposition to the King's scheme, and paid his proctor at Rome handsomely for his trouble on their behalf^ The Bull of Union was issued on the 13th of November, 1463, but it is not clear ■ Rolls of Parliament, vol. v. pp. 463 — 475 ; Patent Roll, i Edvv. IV. p. 3, m. 24. ' Dugdale's Monasticon Angli- canum, under the account of the Alien Priories in vol. vi. 5 Lambarde's Dictionarium An- glice,p^. 421 — 422. •• Sloane MS. 4840, f. 220. 5 Carlisle's Grammar Schools, vol. i. p. 57, quoting Windsor MS. WES TB UR Y'S P ROTES T. 6i how soon it took effect, if, indeed, it ever took effect at all. This is the most obscure, as well as the most melancholy, page in the history of Eton ; but it is relieved by one memorable proceeding. On the 15th of July, 1463, Provost Westbury proceeded to St. Martin's-le-Grand in London, and there, in the presence of a notary-public, issued two documents, one addressed to his fellow-countrymen, the other to the Pope. In the latter, he declared solemnly that he had been lawfully elected, and was in full and undisputed possession of the Provostship ; that he was a man of good position, of blameless reputation, and honest life, not suffering under any suspension, excom- munication, or interdict, or accused of any notorious offence ; but that, having reason to anticipate some sort of molesta- tion, he desired the special protection of the supreme pontiff.' It is worthy of remark, that throughout this appeal he utterly ignored the recent Bull of Union. In the other document, Westbury went over some of the same ground, but he added a formal protest to the effect that he had never consented, and never would consent, to the suppression of Eton College ; and that if he had ever appeared to consent to such a proceeding, his conduct must be ascribed to cowardice — a weakness which sometimes betrays the most constant men. These protests were probably inspired by Bishop Waynflete, who had himself made one of a similar character, when anticipating danger from the Yorkist party in 1451.3 Waynflete had been able to assist Westbury in many cases of difficulty concerning the College, though his own personal influence at Court had declined since the deposition of his patron, Henry VI. He had held the office of Lord Chancellor till a few days before the disastrous battle of Northampton, ' Eton Muniment Room, Drawer 46, No. 9. " Eton Muniment Room, Drawer 8, No. II. 3 Chandler's Life of Waynflete. 62 TRANSFER OF GOODS. and he was consequently regarded with some distrust by Edward IV. Nevertheless, as Bishop of Winchester, he was still an important personage, and we are probably not far wrong in ascribing the eventual preservation of Eton to his unceasing exertions. The Chapter of Windsor took steps to counteract the effect of Westbury's protest, and sent the Dean and one of the Canons to London for eleven days to conduct negotia- tions on their behalf They were so far successful as to obtain a letter from the King, ordering the removal of the jewels, bells, and other furniture, from Eton, and giving instructions as to the future status of the members of the College.^ A long list of the goods which were sent up to the Castle in 1465 is preserved among the muniments at Eton. The amalgamation of the two bodies, however, can never have been complete, as their accounts were always kept separate. The series of rolls at Windsor of this period is tolerably perfect, but many of the Eton rolls are missing. The earliest roll at Eton belonging to the reign of Edward IV. exhibits a sad contrast to those of the later years of the good King Henry. The College revenues, which had once amounted to some 1,500/. a year, had, by 1468, sunk to 370/., a sum which was utterly inadequate to defray the necessary expenses. The prospect must have been very gloomy. As the College could not run into debt, when its own future existence was at stake, a policy of retrenchment had to be adopted. lelino Hermer Canonico pro ad- quisitionc tinius brevis missi a domino Rege Decano et Canonicis pro translafdone jocalium, cam- paiiarum, et stabiliniento presbi- terorum, clerico}-uin, et puerorum, ijs. iiijd. " Marked "pro Eton," in the margin of a roll in the IVTuni- nient Room of the Dean and Chap- ter of St. George's at Windsor Castle. • " Solutuni domino Willelmo Hermer Canonico pro expensis siiis misso per Capitulum cum domino Decano London pro materia unionis in mense Augusti anno Edwardi iiij"-- ii'°- expectando ibidem a xvj'"- die August i usque xxvj"'' diem ejus- dem mensis inclusive, viz. per xj'" dies, capiendo per diem if' iiij'' , xxv'- viij''' " Et soil/ turn die to domino Wil- RE TRENCHMEN T. 63 The almsmen were abolished, the number of scholars was considerably reduced, and vacant Fellowships were not filled up. But even these modifications of the original foundation did not prove sufficient. The commons at every table in hall had to be reduced in value as well as in number, so as to bring them down to 3/. los. a week, instead of 7/. as before. In 1468, the Provost and Fellows did not receive any stipend whatever. The Master and Usher, being hired, could of course claim as creditors, but even they submitted to a considerable diminution of their salaries, viz., from 16/. and 10/. to 10/. and 4/. respectively.' At this lower scale the remuneration of these officers remained fixed until the middle of the sixteenth century. The School in 1468 was for the second time under the management of a certain Clement Smyth, who had resigned his first tenure of the Mastership on being elected a Fellow of Eton in 1458. He must have had a decided taste for teaching, as he soon vacated his Fellowship in order to accept the post of Master at Winchester.^ When Eton was in a critical position, he very generously came back to his original duties there, but at the inferior salary ; so that he well deserved the prebcndal stall at Windsor which was shortly afterwards bestowed upon him.' Of his successor in the Mastership of Eton, Walter Barber, nothing is recorded, except that he was the " father of Walter the Hermit," ■* a person evidently better known in his own day than in ours. By the date at which Clement Smyth ultimately left Eton, 1469, the state of affairs had improved considerably. The King had, somehow, been induced to abandon his project of annexing the College to St. George's, and the regular elections to King's had been resumed. The Provost and ■ Eton Audit Roll, 1467— 1468. " Regisimm Regale j Walcott's William of Wykeham, p. 356. 3 Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesics An- glicance, vol. iii. p. 388. ■> Annotated Register of Scholars at King's College, Cambridge. 64 RE-ESTABLISHMENT. Fellows, too, received the arrears of their stipends, though at a lower rate than that ordered by the Founder. Thenceforth the yearly allowance in mbney to the Provost was 20/. instead of 50/., and that to each of the Fellows 5/. instead of 10/.' Some tapestry was also removed from St. George's at the expense of the College.^ Nevertheless the College revenues recovered but slowly. The number of Fellowships, which had sunk from ten to four, was only gradually raised to seven ; and the spoliation committed by Edward IV. was, in each of the next two centuries, pronounced to be a valid excuse for the permanent suppression of the three remaining places. How Eton recovered the King's favour is not recorded ; but Provost Westbury was frequently in London on business It may have been from a sense ' of gratitude for favours received that the poor College made various small presents, generally consisting of fish, to powerful nobles and prelates. Among the recipients, occurs the name of George Nevill, the time-serving Archbishop of York, brother of the famous " King-maker." 3 In July 1467, Edward IV. restored to Eton a portion of its former landed possessions ; •» but on the very next day he bestowed some of the estates of King's College at Atherston, Chesynbery, Quarle, Uphaven, and other places, on his favourite clergy at Windsor.^ Finally he directed his agents at Rome to explain that he had been misinformed about the state of affairs at Eton, and to beg for the revocation of the Bull of Union. Cardinal Barbo, ' Eton Audit '&j:>\i%, passim. " Ibid. 1468 — 1469. (Willi5 and Clark, vol. i. p. 406.) 3 Eton Audit Roll, 1469— 1470. " In exennio data domino Archi- episcopo Eboracensi, viz. j dentrice et truta, v=- ij''- " " Patent Roll, 7 Edw. IV., p. 2, ram. 12, 13 ; Sloane MS. 4840, f. 152. I vjs. yjij 5 Dugdale's Monasticon Anf;li- canum, vol. vi. p. 1358. — The Dean and Chapter had some trouble in the matter. Their roll of accounts for the year records a payment " Johan?ii Catesby servienti ad legem, pro consilio sua habendo in inateriis de Chesynbery, Querle, Up- haven, et materia J ohanjtis Gardyn, ;d. " RE-ES TA BL ISHMENT. 65 who, as we have seen, had been engaged in the negotiations concerning the foundation of the College,' was now Pope, under the title of Paul II. He proved quite willing to reverse the decree of Pius II. ; but, being anxious that there should be no further disputes in the matter, he gave full power to the Archbishop of Canterbury to enquire into the facts of the case, and only to cancel the Bull of Union if the King's latest statements turned out more correct than the earlier.^ This was a great triumph for Provost Westbury, who caused two copies of the new bull to be transcribed,3 and went up to London several times on the matter. He no longer enjoyed the use of St. James's Hospital, but the College used to pay the rent of his lodgings at Queenhithe, near the Tower.+ During his stay there, he was constantly engaged in consultation with " doctors of law, notaries, proctors, and scribes " with respect to the bulls, and also with respect to the enrolment of a royal writ for securing the College against molestation.^ It was at this period that Henry VI. was restored to the throne, but only for a few months. Edward IV. was ' Page 8. ' The decree of Cardinal Bour- chier, 30th of August, 1476, recites this Commission of Paul II., which is dated 1470. The original decree, formerly in the Muniment Room at Eton, Drawer 48, No. I, is now kept in one of the glass cases in the Library. 3 Eton Bursai-s' Roll, 1469— 1470. " Pro scriptura ij copiarum bulk nuper obtente et directs domino Cardinali, vj"- viij''- " * Eton Audit Roll, 1469- 1470. "Pro redditu domus Magistri Pre- positi London apud Quenehythe pro iij terminis, ad xt/- per ter- minum, xlv^- " 5 Ib'd. 1470— 1 47 1. '■'■ Inregardis datis et expensis adhuc circa doc- tores in jure, notaries, procicratores, et scribas, pro executione unius bulle apostolice directe domino Car- dinali Archiepiscopo Caiituariensi, iv"- xix^' Et in expensis et regardis datis diversis doctoribus et notariis pro expeditione ejusdem bulle Apos- tolice concernentis se^parationem Collegii nostri de Eton a Collegia Sancti Georgii de Windsor mensi- bus Novembris et Decembris, xiv"- xjs. yjd. " . Eton Audit Roll, 1469— 1470. " Pro j breve de non molestan- do directo Thesaurario et Baronibus pro diversis maneriis Collegii anno vij Edwardi concess', vij^- x'^- Et pro irrotulatione ejtcsdem, brevis in scaccario Regis, eadem vice, iv^- " F 66 DEATH OF HENRY VI. King both at the opening and at the close of the Eton financial year, which ended at Michaelmas 147 1. The Bursars of that year, therefore, acted wisely in omitting from their accounts any direct allusion to the important political changes that had occurred during their tenure of office. To them Henry VI. and Edward IV. were equally " our Lord the King." Yet it is interesting to observe that the former did not neglect his own foundation during his short restoration to power, for he must certainly have been the king who sent a messenger to the College on the morrow of Christmas 1470.' An indirect memorial of the Lancastrian success may also be found in the record of a present of fish given to Edmund Beaufort, styled " Duke of Somerset," and John Courtenay, styled " Earl of Devon," ^ two nobles whose titles had been forfeited by Edward IV. Westbury went to London to watch the interests of the College during the short session of Par- liament in which Edward was denounced as a traitor and usurper.3 He also went to see the Founder once more a few weeks later, but if he saw him it was only as a corpse. The entry in the Eton Audit Roll recording his visit to London on the morrow of Ascension Day 1471, that is to say on the 24th of May, is interesting, and suffices to confute the theory that the royal prisoner lived on into the month of June : — '• In expensis Magistri Prepositi equitantis London in crastino Ascensionis Domini pro exequiis Regis Henrici vj"-, vijs- ix''-' This quite confirms the statement in Fabyan : — "• "Then upon Assencion Even next ensuing, the corps of Henry the Sixt late Kyng, was brought unreverently from the Towre, thorowe the high streates of the Citie, ' Eton Audit Roll, 1470— 1471. - Ibid. " In exeniiio data Duct " In regardo data nuncio doniini Somerset et Comiti Devonie, viz. i Regis per Magistrum Prepositum piscibus salsis^^ Qt'c. in die Sancti Johafinis Evangeliste, ' Ibid. W iV- " -t Chronicle, vol. ii. p. 505. DEATH OF HENRY VI. 67 unto Paules Churche, and there left there that night, and upon the morowe conveighed with gleves ' and other weapons, as he before thither was brought, unto Chertessey, and there was buried. Of the death of this prince divers tales wer told. But the most common fame went, that he was sticken with a dagger, by the handes of the Duke of Gloceter.'' The anonymous chronicler in Leland is even more precise : — "The same night beyng the 21 day of May and Tuesday at night betwixt a xi and xii of the Clok, was King Henry, being prisoner yn the Tourre, put to deth ; the Duke of Glocestre, and dyverse other, beyng there that night. And in the morow he was brought to S. Paulis Chirch in London in a cophyn, and there lay open facid and bledde, and thens caryid to the Blake Frerers in London and ther bled. And thens to Chirtesay Abbay yn a bote, and there was byried in our Lady Chapel." ^ Any sorrow for the Founder's death, or horror at his supposed murder, which Westbury may have felt, had to be disguised when Edward IV and his queen visited Eton in the second week of July. Their retinue on this occasion comprised about thirty persons, but they came again the very next week with about a hundred attendants ; on a third visit in the month of September they brought one or more foreign ambassadors in their suite.3 These frequent visits indicate that Edward had begun to take some personal interest in the College, and he seems to have ordered a boat to be kept for " Glaive, " a weapon composed of a long cutting blade at the end of a lance." Halliwell's Dictionary, p. 402. ' Collectanea, vol. ii. p. 507. For the subsequent removal of King Henry's bones see the Ap- pendix to Stanley's Westminster Abbey. 3 Eton Bursars' Roll, 1470 — 1471. " Pro vino expenso circa dominuin Regem et Reginam et eorum fatni- liares et alios venientes per iij vices F 2 68 EARL RIVERS. his use at Eton.^ The relations between the clergy at the Castle and those at Eton were, by this time, sufficiently amicable to allow of the latter giving a present of fish to the Dean of Windsor.^' But Westbury did not relax his efforts to make his opponents disgorge their late acquisitions, and he succeeded in obtaining a letter under the Privy Seal, ordering the restitution of the College goods.3 By virtue of this order, the bells were removed from St. George's, and re-hung in their original places at Eton.4 A number of copes and other vest- ments were also restored or given to the College in 147 i.s Eton certainly had powerful friends at Court in the members of the Queen's family, who were popularly accused of exercising an undue influence over Edward IV. Her eldest brother Anthony, Earl Rivers, was a distinguished patron of literature and of learned men, especially of William Caxton the printer. He evinced a warm interest in the fortunes of the College, and procured for it a royal grant of a tenement called " the Crane " in the Vintry in the City of London. In consideration of the services which he had performed, the Provost and Fellows bound themselves and their successors to " cause a masse dayly to be seid within the Churche of the seid College, at the auter of our Lady," at a quarter past seven in the morning. It was specially provided that sixty " knolles, or strokes," should daily be sounded "with a grete belle in the seid College nye afore the be- ginnyng of the seide masse, so that wel disposed people may have knowledge to come to the seide mass." The chaplain who performed the service was instructed to pray for " oure ' Eton Bursars' Roll, undated, probably 12 Edw. IV. " Pro cimba Regis et iij remis emptis pro doinino Rege, ultra xV- solutos per dictum dominum Regem, xix'- iv''- Et pro j cor da entpta ad trahendam dictam cimbam London Etone, y]^' Et pro deductione fiifie cimbe London ad Collegium, iij- J"- " ^ Eton Audit Roll, 1470— 1471 "/« exennio data per Magistrum Prepositum Decano de Windsor, viz.j truta et j dentrice." 3 Ibid. ' Ibid. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 406.) 5 Ibid. THE COLLEGE SEAL. 69 soveraine lorde Kyng Edwarde the iiij*, our soveraine lady Quene Elisabeth, the prince their sonne, and the lords and ladyes his bredren and sistren, the said Erie Ryvers and alle his bredren and sistren," his father, and his mother, the well- known Jaquinet of Luxemburg, and other relations. In addition to this daily mass, the College undertook to keep a solemn anniversary for Lord Rivers and his family, on the 30th of October.' This arrangement was made some eight years before the death of Lord Rivers, and the mass and obit were kept up until the reign of Edward VI. Another mass founded about the same time by John Bonor, one of the Fellows, eventually shared the same fate.^ An entry, upon the cover of the earliest register book at Eton, to the effect that on the 4th of March, 1474, the Col- lege seal was broken, and a new one adopted in the presence of the Provost and Fellows, has already been noticed by Carlisle ; but the reason for this proceeding has escaped observation. 3 A comparison of the original seal with that adopted in 1474, and still in use, will show that the change was made on political grounds. The former is in every way the more elaborate and beautiful of the two ; but it contains a figure of Henry VI. as King, and as Founder of the College, which doubtless gave offence to the Yorkists.t It was there- fore omitted from the second seal, and the distinctive supporters of Edward IV. were placed on each side of the Arms of France and England. The cause of the Red Rose may, indeed, have appeared hopeless, or even unjust ; but this deliberate slight on the memory of " the meek usurper " does little credit to men who had been recipients of his bounty. ' Eton Register, vol. i. ff. 154 — 156. May 29, 15 Edw. IV. ' Ibid, and Audit Books passim. 3 Grammar Schools, vol. i. ■• Impressions of the original seal are very scarce. I know of only two — one, somewhat blunt, in the British Museum, yi^^. Chai-t, 7210 ; the other, clearer, but very imper- fect, at Dunster Castle. The wood- cut on page 1 5 has been made from a comparison of these two impres- sions, but it cannot aspire to being perfectly accurate. 7° THE COLLEGE SEAL. The boldness of Westbury's protest against the suppression of the College has earned for him the name of " the Camillus of Eton," ' but a closer examination of his conduct must prevent our accepting him as a hero. Seal of Eton College. At one time it seemed as though the subserviency of its principal members would hardly save Eton from destruction ; for, in May i4-74, Edward IV. granted to the Dean and Chapter of Windsor many of the lands which he had himself given or confirmed to Eton seven years previously.^ This grant, how- ever, does not appear to have taken effect.^ The King may have made it under some temporary fit of resentment, or by error. Indeed, it is difificult to account for the inconsistent manner in which he alternately gave and took away the Eton endowments.* ' Eto?iiana, p.,g. ' Patent Roll, 14 Edw. IV., p. i, m. I, printed in Dugdale's Monasti- con Anglicanum, vol. vi. p. 1359. 3 Ashmole's Order of the Garter. ■* See the accounts of various Alien Priories in Dugdale's Monas- ticon Anglicamim, vol. vi. THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. 71 One of the properties which changed hands several times during his reign was the Alien Priory of West Sherborne in Hampshire. Before it was finally taken away from Eton, loud complaints were raised against the conduct of the Provost and Fellows, who had ejected the Prior and monks, and had carried off all the jewels, relics, ornaments, and charters. Their chief offence, however, was said to consist in allowing " horses and cartes dayly to goo uppon the sepultures of Cristen people in gret nombre buried in the Chirch there, whereof moo than XXX sumtyme were worshipfull barons, knyghtes, and squyers," and in putting a stop to the prayers for the founder, Henry du Port, and his family. An Act of Parliament was accordingly passed in 147S, compelling the College to maintain a priest at West Sherborne for the due performance of the offices for the dead.' The building of the new Collegiate Church of Eton appears to have been resumed in 1469, under the auspices of Bishop Waynflete, to whom the Provost made several visits, " in order to begin the works at the Church," and " to obtain money " for them.= The King instructed the Constable of Windsor to allow the Provost and Fellows to dig chalk and flint in the park ; 3 but we do not know of any further assistance being given. Leland expressly states that a considerable portion of the buildings of Eton College, left imperfect by King Henry, was finished at the expense of Waynflete.'* The audit-rolls fully corroborate this, and show that the College used to send to the Bishop for money several times in every year. Waynflete's generosity towards Eton is the more noble in that there he was only carrying out the scheme of another, whereas Magdalen College at Oxford, and the school at his birthplace in ' Rolls of Parliament, vol. vi. P- 143- " Eton Audit Rolls, 1469, and 1469— 1470. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 407-) 3 Warrant in English addressed to the Constable of Windsor and dated 21st of March, 1472. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 408.) ■* Itinerarium, vol. ix. p. 33. 72 THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. Lincolnshire, were his own foundations. All contracts for building materials at this period seem to have been made in his name. One of them, made in 1479, was with a mason named Orchyard, for a supply of the best stone to be raised in the well-known quarry at Headington, near Oxford ; and, later on, we find the Vice-Principal of Magdalen entering the stone for the two Colleges on the same account.' No building-accounts of the time of Edward IV. have been preserved at Eton ; but it appears from the audit-rolls that one of the Fellows named Wyther acted as overseer, or possibly architect. The very walls of the Church bear evidence of the exact stage at which Waynflete resumed the incomplete work. An irregularity in the mouldings round the curved head of the great east window, which is noticeable from without as well as from within, seems to show that Waynflete, anxious to see the work finished, made use of stones which had been prepared for an arch of smaller span.^ A wooden roof was also con- structed over the choir ; but, probably, only as a makeshift ; and it is to be hoped that this subject of reproach may some day be taken away. When Waynflete undertook the completion of the buildings at Eton, he must have been more than seventy years of age, and, as has been seen, he had other important works on hand. There was therefore no chance of his living long enough to be able to carry out, the designs of Henry VI. in their entirety. Nor was there any prospect of a new patron coming forward with liberality equal to his own. Under these circumstances, it appeared wise to abandon the Founder's scheme of an enormous nave, and to substitute for it the smallest structure which would conveniently accommodate the parishioners. This, then, is the origin of the westernmost portion of the present building, formerly called the " nave," but now the " ante- ' Chandler's Life of Waynflete, p. 154. Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 410. ° See the cut in Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 427. THE ROOD-LOFT. 73 chapel," which somewhat resembles the corresponding parts of the Chapels of New College, Winchester College, All Souls' College, and Magdalen College at Oxford. To an inexperienced eye the exterior of the ante-chapel appeared until lately the old- est pie-ce of masonry at Eton, but this error was entirely owing to the nature of the Headington stone, which, under the influence of time, decays much more rapidly than the finer material of which the choir is principally composed.' When the interior of the building was undergoing restoration, some forty years ago, traces were found of a lofty arch which had originally been designed to separate the choir from the nave. The present arch, and the window over it, were evidently erected in the reign of Edward IV., and it must be ranked among the least favourable examples of Perpendicular architecture. The organ-gallery now occupies the site of a wooden rood-loft, ordered by Bishop Waynflete, whose contract with a carver at Southwark, named Walter Nicholl, is preserved at Eton.'' From this document it appears that the Bishop provided the necessary materials, and paid the carriage, so that Nicholl had only to find the labour, for which he was to receive lOO marks. Part of his work con- sisted in taking down the rood-loft and stalls in the old Church, which, it must be remembered, was at that time still standing in the cemetery on the southern side of the present building. Waynflete stipulated that the west side of the new rood-loft should be copied from that at Winchester College, and the east side and the adjoining seats in the choir, from the cor- responding woodwork in the church of St. Thomas of Acre in London. The agreement was made in August 1475, and Nicholl undertook to complete his work within two years. Notes of the successive instalments of money paid to him by the Provost were endorsed on the document. The audit-roll of 1476 shows that the new Church must then have been nearly finished, inasmuch as Bishop Waynflete's ' The ante-chapel was refaced I ° Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. with Bath stone in 1877. I 409, 596—598- 74 POVERTY OF THE COLLEGE. glazier came to Eton thrice to take measurements of the windows, and especially of the eastern window.' It is prob- able that the old Church was demolished in the course of the next three years, a period for which the rolls of accounts are unfortunately missing. Lead, presumably for the roof of the ante-chapel, was obtained from Derbyshire in 1482.^ Although the building of the Church was making such good progress, several other important matters were still in an unsatisfactory condition. There were but four Fellows ; the number of Scholars was still far below seventy ;3 and there was no absolute security for the permanence of the College. Under these circumstances, the Provost was naturally anxious to obtain the benefit of the last papal bull ; and he sent the counsel of the College into Kent, to plead before the Arch- bishop of Canterbury.'' Cardinal Bourchier, who then occu- pied that see, took a favourable view of the case, and finally pronounced judgment in favour of Eton, on the 30th of August, 1476, requiring the Chapter of Windsor to abstain from any sort of molestation, under pain of the greater excommunication. 5 Three months later. Provost Westbury executed a receipt and release to Dean Courtenay, for all the goods which had been transferred to the Castle, but had since been restored.^ Westbury did not long survive the formal re-establishment of the College to which he had been attached, either as Master or as Provost, for upwards of thirty-three years, for he died in March 1477. He had successfully guided Eton through the greatest difficulties which beset its course during the first four centuries of its corporate existence ; and although he never saw ' Eton Audit Roll, 1475— 1476. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 408, 409-) . '' Willis and Clark, vol. i. pp. 410, 411. '' Eton Audit Roll, 1475— 1476. « Ibid. 5 Bourchier's decision, adorned with an illumination of the Assump- tion of the Virgin, is in one of the glass cases in the Library at Eton. It vifas formerly in the Muniment Room, Drawer 48, No. I., Huggett copied it. Sloane MS. 4840, f. 220. ■* 30th of November, 16 Edw. IV. Eton Register, vol. i.-f. 106. WILLIAM WESTBURY. 75 the College restored to its former wealth and celebrity, he had at least the satisfaction of feeling that his exertions had not been fruitless. Westbury's funeral must have been one of the earliest that took place in the new Collegiate Church. His monumental brass has been destroyed, and the epitaph on it exists in manuscript only : — ' ''Nate dei patris anime miserere Wilhelim Westburi, cujus ossa sub hoc lapide Condita sunt, natus erat et nutritus in Alford, Wintonie juvenis grammaticam didicit, Oxonie studuit, et in Artibiis ille M agister, Etone piteros grammaticam ducnit. Inde theologus est, hie functus Prepositura 7'olle decern menses lustra per integra sex. Precedente die festum solenne beati Gregorii [pape] niortuus ille fuit. M C quater fit L X bis septem superaddes'' Annus erat Doinim. Salvet euni Dominiis. Avienr These lines are a fair specimen of the style of Latin versification which then prevailed at one of the principal seats of learning in England, an epitaph to the memory of Richard Hopton, one of the Fellows, who died a few years later, being scarcely any better.3 With such examples constantly before them, it would have been surprising indeed if the scholars had exhibited elegance, or even correctness, in their compositions. A couplet occurs in a very curious letter written at Eton, in February 1479, by William Paston, a lad of nineteen, who, though not living in the College, was studying there ■ Rawlinson MS. B. 267, in the were to take the bis with the septem Bodleian Library. = This means 1477— thus, 1000 + 100X4 + 50 + 10X2 + 7. If we the date would be 1474 \ 3 This is also given in Rawl. MS. B. 267. 76 WILLIAM PAS TON. under the direction of one of the Fellows. The letter runs thus : — ■ " To his worshipful brother John Paston, be this delivered in haste." " Right reverend and worshipful brother, after all duties of recommendation, I recommend me to you, desiring to hear of your prosperity and welfare, which I pray God long to continue to His pleasure and to your heart's desire ; letting you weet that I received a letter from you, in the which letter was 8^., with the which I should buy a pair of slippers. " Furthermore, certifying you as for the 135-. 4^/. which ye sent by a gentleman's man for my board, called Thomas Newton, was delivered to mine hostess, and so to my creanser^ Mr. Thomas Stevenson ;3 and he heartily re- commended him to you. Also ye sent me word in the letter of 12 lb. figs and 8 lb. raisins. I have them not delivered, but I doubt not I shall have, for Alweder told me of them, and he said that they came after in another barge. " And as for the young gentlewoman, I will certify you how I first fell in acquaintance with her. Her father is dead, there be two sisters of them ; the elder is just wedded, at which wedding I was with mine hostess and also desired by the gentleman himself, called William Swan, whose dwelling is in Eton. So it fortuned that mine hostess reported on me otherwise than I was worthy ; so that her mother com- manded her to make me good cheer, and so in good faith ' Paston Letters, vol. iii. pp. 240 — 242. I have given the modern- ised version, partly because a schoolboy's spelling is of little value, partly because the original version is accessible in Mr. Gaird- ner's edition. ' ° The word "creanser'' is equi- valent to the French " crdancier" and the Latin "creditor." In this instance it seems to denote a tutor, as in the statutes of Magdalen Col- lege, Oxford, vifhere it is enacted that the sons of noblemen and other wealthy persons shall be " sub tutela et regiinine creditorum ■vulgariter creancers nuncupatoruntr 3 Thomas Stevenson, Fellow of Eton, July 12, 1479, WILLIAM PASTON. 77 she did. She is not abiding where she is now, her dweUing is in London ; but her mother and she came to a place of hers five miles from Eton where the wedding was, for because it was nigh to the gentleman which wedded her daughter ; and on Monday next coming— that is to say, the first Monday of Clean Lent— her mother and she will go to the pardon at Sheen,' and so forth to London, and there to abide in a place of hers in Bow Churchyard. And if it please you to enquire of her, her mother's name is Mis- tress Alborow, the name of the daughter is Margaret Alborow. " The age of her is by all likelihood eighteen, or nineteen years at the farthest. And as for the money and plate, it is ready whensoever she were wedded ; but as for the liveli- hood, I trow, not till after her mother's decease, but I cannot tell you for very certain, but you may know by enquiring. And as for her beauty, judge you that when you see her, if so be that ye take the labour, and specially behold her hands, for and if it be as is told me she is disposed to be thick. " And as for my coming from Eton, I lack nothing but versifying, which I trust to have with a little continuance. ' Quare, quo modo non valet Jwra, valet mora. Unde di^ Arbore jam videas exemplum. Non die possiint Omnia siippleri, sed tamen ilia mora! " And these two verses aforesaid be of mine own making. No more to you at this time, but God have you in His keeping. Written at Eton, the Even of Saint Mathias the Apostle, in haste, with the hand of your brother, " William Paston, Jun." ' Co. Surrey. I The first line appears to be the " Probably dico, or dictum est. | subject set by the Master, 78 WILLIAM PASTON. In another letter, which should perhaps be referred to the previous year, William Paston thanks his brother for a " noble in gold," which he had received, but says, " My creanser. Master Thomas, heartily recommended him to you, and he prayeth you to send him some money for my commons, for he saith ye be twenty shillings in his debt, for a month was to pay for when he had money last. Also I beseech you to send me a hose cloth, one for the holy days, of some colour, and another for the working days (how coarse soever it be it maketh no matter) and a stomacher, and two shirts, and a pair of slippers. And if it like you that I may come with Alweder by water, and sport me with you at London a day or two this term-time, then ye may let all this be till the time that I come, and then I will tell you when I shall be ready to come from Eton, by the grace of God, who have you in His keeping. Written the Saturday next after Allhallows Day, with the hand of your brother." ' Young Paston does not mention what his ordinary amuse- ments were at Eton when he was not love-making ; but it seems probable that he sometimes heard minstrels in the Hall.^ In the absence of any positive statement, it is difficult to define the exact nature of the entertainments given there ; but we know that the minstrels of the fifteenth century did not con- fine themselves to instrumental music. They were the singers, the actors, and the buffoons, of the day. The company who performed at Eton had lately been constituted a corporate body by Edward IV.3 When a single minstrel in the service ' Paston Letters, (ed. Gairdner) vol. iii. pp. 237, 238. ' Eton Audit Roll, undated, but evidently 1468 — 1469. "Inregardo data ministrallis domini Regis per Magistriim Prepositum, w'f' viij'"' '' In another undated Roll, probably 1472 — 1473, "Ministrallis domini Regis in Festo Sancti Georgii, v'f- viij''- " ' See the Essay on the Ancient Minstrels in Percy's Reliques oj Ancient English Poetry, vol. i,, and Warton's History of English Poetry, (ed. Hazlitt) vol. ii. pp. 96—99. HENRY BOST. 79 of Bishop Waynflete came to Eton, he probabl)' enacted the part of jester and mimic' A more exciting amusement was afforded to the boys by the exhibition of Lord Stanley's bears in the College.^ There is no reason to doubt their having been baited there, as this pastime was not thought too cruel or too coarse for the eyes of Queen Elizabeth a century later.3 Soon after \\'estbury's death, the Fellows met in the Church in order to elect a new Provost in conformity with the statutes.-* The choice of a majority fell upon Thomas Barker, a former Vice-Provost, who was accordingly elected, in defiance ot the known wishes of the King. Barker, however, simplified matters by refusing the post, wisely enough, if some words in his epitaph are to be taken literally : — • " Postea Prepositus clcctus, cessit honor i Nolens : id ineniinit mors indignatio regutii." 5 The Fellows accordingly met again, and elected the King's nominee, Henry Bost, who had just been elected to a fifth Fellowship " to serve a turn," that is to say, for a qualification. Bost already held the Provostship of Queen's College, Oxford, and the Mastership of King's Hall, Cambridge ; but he did not resign either of these preferments for some time.* His epitaph states that through his influence the wife of Edward IV. gave large sums to the College.? Eton tradition ' Eton Audit Roll, 1484— 1485. " In regardo data cuidam mims- trallo domini Episcopi IVyn/on." " /did, 1482 — 1483. "/nregardo d.ifo custodibiis ursorutit Domini Stanley per Magistruvi Prcposi- titin, xij''- " ' Brand's Popular Antiquities, (ed. 1813) vol. ii. p. 285. ■• Eton Register, vol. i. => Epitaph at Eton, printed in | the choir. Lipscomb's History of Bucks, \ol. iv. p. 489. The allusion is evidently to Pros^erbs xvi. 14. " The wrath of kings is as messengers of death." * Cooper's Athena Cantab. ' '' Illius auspiciis elemosyna conjugis uncti Edwardi Ouarti laiga plue- bat openif' Epitaph, now mural in Lupton's Chapel at Eton, but formerly in 8o JANE SHORE. rather points him out as the confessor of Jane Shore, who could not with propriety be styled the conjux of the King. It is difficult to give any satisfactory account of the three portraits to which the name of this unfortunate woman has been assigned. One of the two pictures of her at Eton shows only the head and shoulders of a beautiful woman ; the other represents the upper half of a naked figure standing by a bath, and holding a piece of transparent muslin in her hands. The picture at King's College resembles the former. No direct evidence can be adduced in support of the tradition that Jane Shore pleaded the cause of Eton with her royal lover, but Sir Thomas More in his interesting account of her life and character says : — " Where the King toke displeasure, she would mitigate and appease his mind ; where men were out of favour, she wold bring them in his grace ; for many that had highly offended she obtained pardon ; of great forfeitures she gate neu re- mission ; and finally in many weighty sutes she stode many men in gret stede. . . . At this daye she beggeth of many at this day living, that at this day had begged if shee had not bene." ' More describes her as short of stature and pale in face. " Jane Shoar's picture " is mentioned in an inventory of goods at King's College, taken in 1660.'' Bost was certainly acquainted with several members of the royal family. The Prince of Wales visited the College in 1480, and Edward IV. was entertained there by the Provost in the month of January 1483.3 This may have been the last occasion on which he came to Eton alive, as he died on the 9th of April at Westminster. His corpse lay in state for several days, and was then conveyed with great ceremony to " More's Works, (ed. 1557) pp. 56, 57- ° Cambridge Aniiquarian Com- munications, vol. iv. p. 306. It has been suggested that Diane de Poitiers was the real subject of the portrait. 3 Eton Audit Roll, 1479 — 1480. Work was done " erga adventum familie domini Principis ;" Ibid. 1482 — 1483. " In vino — scilicet v lagenis — expenso in mense Januarii cum Rex E. 4''" fuit in camera Magistri Prepositi, mf- \\\f- " FUNERAL OF EDWARD IV. 8j. Sion, and so, on the following day, to Windsor, attended by some of the principal nobles and bishops of the kingdonn. The funeral chariot, drawn by six coursers, carried not only the embalmed body of Edward IV. under " a riche and large black cloth of gold, with a crosse of white clothe of gold," but also a lay-figure, or " personage like to the similitude to the King in habite roiall, crowned with the verray crown on his hed, liolding in that one hande a sceptre, and in that other hand a balle of silver and gilte with a crospate." The procession halted at Eton, and was met by the Bishops of Lincoln and Ely, who came forward with the members of the College and censed the corpse,' while the bells were solemnly tolled.^ Skelton represents the spirit of Edward IV. lamenting over the transitory nature of this world and its joys : — ■ " Where is now my conquest and victory ? Where is my riches and royal aray .■' Where be my coursers and my horses hye .' Where is my myrth, my solas, and my play } As vanyte, to nought al is wandred away. O lady Bes, longe for me may yc call. For I am departed tyl domis day ; But love ye that Lorde that is soveraygne of all. Where be my castels and buyldynges royall .' But Windsore alone, now I have no more. And of Eton the prayers perpetuall, Et, ecce, nunc in pulvere dormio ! " ' There is an elaborate account of the funeral in Archaologia, vol. i. p. 348, printed also in Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor, vol. i. p. 39i, and in Gairdner's Letters illustrative of the Reign of Richard III., vol. i. p. 7. ' Eton Audit Roll, 1482— 1483. " In regardis datis xij personis pulsantibus erga corpus Regis E. 4"'- et continue per x dies singulis noctibus ad mandatwn Magistri Prepositi, y'f viij''- " 1483—1509- Richard III. and Henry VII. — Death of Waynflete — Paintings in the Church — Mediaeval Legends — Style of the Paintings — Restitution of Property — Altars and Images in the Church — Death of Dr. Bost — Election of Dr. Luptdn — Distinguished Visitors. HE reigns of Edward V. and Richard III. appear to have passed quietly enough at Eton. The Provost and one of the Fellows rode to London at the time of the coronation of the latter King,' and obtained from him a general pardon for the College.'' Perhaps they would not have been so anxious to procure his portrait, which now hangs in the Election Chamber, if they could have foreseen the battle of Bosworth. The union of the rival claims of the Houses of Lancaster and York seemed to promise a period of peace and prosperity for the College. Without giving any credence to the tradition that Henry VH. had himself been educated at Eton,3 we may ' Eton Audit Roll, 1482—1483- " Pro expensis Magistri Wyther ad dominum Wintonie London tempore coronationis Regis Ricardi tertii cum famulo xix''-, ei pro expensis Magistri Prepositi apud Sanc- tum Jacobttm tempore coronationis Regis Ricardi tertii per vj dies, xxxij*^" xj''' di." " Preserved in a glass case in the Library at Eton. ^ Sandford, who compiled his Genealogical History in the time of Charles II., is apparently the earliest authority for this story, which has been perpetuated in stained glass in the western window of the Hall. PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH. 83 easily imagine that he looked with favour on an institution in which his great-uncle and early patron had taken so warm an interest. A sign of the times may be noticed in the restoration of a statue of Henry VI., whom the Bursars no longer scrupled to call " the most devout King, the Founder of the College." ' Several persons who had been connected with Eton had by this time risen to high offices in the State, among whom may be especially noticed Rotherham, Archbishop of York, and Marshall, Bishop of Llandaff, a former Fellow. On the other hand, the College sustained a severe loss by the death of William Waynflete, who survived the restoration of his own party to power by only one year. However he lived long enough to see the Church of Eton completed within as well as without. The stalls which had been erected at his expense in the choir were quite low, and not surmounted by canopies, so that there was a considerable interval between them and the string-course under the windows. The idea of leaving large expanses of stone-work white and bare, did not commend itself to the taste of mediaeval architects, but of course the system of decoration adopted varied considerably in different churches. At Eton, it was resolved that the blank walls above the stalls should be painted with figure-subjects in the highest style of art then known. The whitewash applied in 1561, and the panelling erected in 1700, so effectually covered these paintings, that their very existence was quite forgotten until 1847. We shall hereafter have to describe the treatment which they received during the " restoration " of that year. Suffice it therefore to say, that it was not until after they had been dreadfully mutilated, that R. H. Essex, a skilful artist, was employed to make a series of pencil drawings from them,'' ' Eton Audit Roll, 1484— 1485. 1 of the mural paintings was litho- ' These drawings are kept in the graphed by Miss E. K. Cust and Library at Eton, and the woodcuts Miss G. A. Cust, daughters of one in this work have been copied from of the Canons of Windsor. them. Another series of drawings ] 84 PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH. and that what still remains of them is concealed from view by the canopies of the stalls. There was originally a double row of paintings on the north igraj &^f Fr^n 1' f/l ^ l/i V J li'i 1 J^Mi r:::^iv-*'i^V \^ ^^\ i^ ^ St. Etheldreda. St. Theodosia (?). and south walls of the choir, each row being divided longi- tudinally into seventeen compartments, alternately wide and narrow. The former contained historical compositions ; the latter single figures of Saints, represented as standing in can- opied niches. Most of these Saints may be identified by their PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH. 8S emblems. Under each of the large compartments there was a Latin inscription, explaining the subject of the picture, and giving a reference to the book whence its story was derived." f? ^ J \ i i i 1 m V Q — — — -^ ^ V i"^ r St. Dorolhea. St. Barbara. The works most frequently quoted were the Legenda Sanctorum ■ Essex was unable to decipher some of these inscriptions, and he has given many of the references incorrectly; e.g., he has always quoted the 8th instead of the 6th Book of Vincent An elaborate list of the subjects, not however quite free from error, is given by Mr. Clark, vol. i. pp. 598 — 607. 86 PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH. and Vincent of Beauvais's Speadum Historiale, one of the earliest productions of the printing-press, which had already gone through three editions before 1479. According to a practice which prevailed extensively in the fifteenth century, successive incidents of a story were often represented as form- ing only one scene, the same figures appearing two or three times in the same picture. The whole series was intended to exemplify the gracious protection afforded by the Blessed Virgin, the patroness of the College, to her votaries in all ages and countries. No less than six of the compartments were occupied by scenes from the life of a mythical Roman Empress. Her legend, as givfen in the Gesta Romanorum, has been turned into verse by Occleve ; " and one of its incidents has afforded themes to Chaucer = and Gower.3 The paintings at Eton follow the version of Vincent,* which differs from the other in several particulars, and which may thus be rendered : — ^\t J'tgtnb of a ^ontatt €mprtss. Once upon a time there was a Roman Emperor, who had a beautiful and excellent wife. None on earth w£re happier than they, and he trusted her entirely ; so when he was starting on a long journey to the Holy Places, he com- mitted the care of his kingdom to her. But he had a wicked brother, who loved the Empress with an unholy love, and tormented her daily with his suit. So she imprisoned him in a tower, and she ruled the country wisely and well. When five years were past, she heard that her dear hus- band would soon return to her again, and, in her joy, she released the wicked brother. But he was not grateful for this kindness, and hastened to meet the Emperor, and said to him, " Thy wife hath been false to thee ; so grievously hath she sinned that I shut myself up in a tower, lest I ■ Royal MS. 17, D. vi.. in the ^ Confessio Amantis, lib. ii. British Museum. ■• Speculum Historiale, lib. vi. ' The Man of Lawes Tale. cap. 91 — 93. MEDIAEVAL LEGENDS.. 87 should be a witness of her crimes." Then the Emperor fell on his face and wept, and he lay for an hour like a dead man. So when the Empress came to welcome her lord the next day, he looked at her reproachfully, and smote her to the ground with his own hand, and ordered his servants to take her away and put her to death in a wood. But when they were about to ill-treat her, there passed a good knight returning from the Holy Land. And he delivered her from shame and death, and took her home with him, to be nurse to his own child. This knight also had a wicked brother who loved the fair nurse. But she would not love him. So he swore he would be avenged, and coming secretly one night into her chamber he killed the child who was sleeping in her arms, and placed the bloody dagger in her hand. 88 MEDIJ'.VAL LEGENDS. Thus the good knight and his wife were led to bcHeve that the nurse had murdered the child. And they sent her away in a ship, saying to the captain, " Take this wretched woman hence, and leave her in some distant land, so that we may never see her face again." Then the wicked sailors, struck by her beauty, would have tempted her to evil, but, finding her to be good and virtuous, they left her on a desolate rock in the midst of the sea. And she lay down and slept sweetly. And there appeared to her a wondrously fair lady, who was none other than the Holy Virgin, who said to her, " Gather the herbs that grow beneath thee on the ground, and with them thou shalt be able to heal the sick." So she did as she was bidden, and the next day some men passed by the rock in a boat, and taking pity on her, conveyed her to a neighbouring port. And there she saw many lepers and other sick folk ; so she mixed the herbs with wine in a cup ; and the sick folk drank of the wine and were healed. And among them there came to her one day the murderer of the good knight's child, but he knew her not. •\l \ I'., nti , ■■cr, ^^crnnBrOf^^Iia^fc Sod Lilh HEAD I From one of the Taural pamtin^s m the Church at Sion, MEDIEVAL LEGENDS. 89 So when he was confessing his sins to her, one sin he hid ; for he would not tell of the murder. Therefore the Empress would not heal him ; but at last he repented of it, and then she healed him. And the good knight would have per- suaded her to become the wife of his penitent brother, but she refused, for she loved none but her own husband. So she journeyed on till she came to Rome, curing many lepers on the way. Now it so chanced that the Emperor's wicked brother, who was afflicted with a grievous illness, came and prayed her to give him to drink of her medicine. But before she would give it to him, she made him confess his evil deeds and his slanderous words before the Pope and the Senate. And when the fact of her innocence was thus clearly established, she made herself known to the Emperor, who received her with joy, and would fain have taken her back to be his wife. But she said, " When I was in sore distress I took an oath that I would give myself entirely to God." So she bade him farewell, and renouncing her royal station, she entered a convent and became a holy nun. • Another story, taken from the Golden Legend, tells how a certain noble lady, being desirous, but unable, to attend mass on the feast of the Purification — Candlemas Day — fell into a trance in her own house, before an altar of the Blessed Virgin, and fancied that she saw in a church a number of virgins all bearing lighted tapers and headed by one who wore a crown ; and that, during the celebration of mass, she herself also held a taper, which she refused to give up to a heavenly messenger. The story proceeds to say that when she awoke she found in her hand a taper, wherewith she afterwards worked many cures." The other legends are shorter, but similar in character. When these paintings were discovered, in 1847, it was as- sumed, from their great beauty and refinement, that they must have been executed by foreigners, and even so skilled a critic as the late Mr. G. E. Street had " no hesitation in ■ See page 158. go PAINTINGS IN THE CHURCH. saying " that they were most probably executed by Florentine artists in the fifteenth century, who, for aught we know, may have been the pupils of the Beato Angelico, or their friends, as they were the contemporaries of Francia, of Perugino, and of Ghirlandaio." ' It is difificult, however, to find any dis- tinctive traces of Italian influence, either in the treatment of the figures, or in the style of the architectural ornaments. It would rather appear that the work was done by, or under the direction of, Flemish artists. The audit-roll for 1479 — 1480 records a small outlay for " candles for the use of the painters working in the College," whose wages were doubtless paid by Waynflete. Three years later, mention is made of " pictures in the nave of the Church," that is to say in the ante-chapel ; and the roll for 1484 — 1485 records another purchase of candles " for the painters and glasiers working in the Church." Lastly, in 1487 — 1488, after the death of the munificent Bishop of Winchester, several entries occur " con- cerning the painting of the Church," the College piying upwards of 8/. to " divers painters," and providing them with colours, oil, gold, and other necessary materials. Three shillings were also then paid " for divers other colours taken out of the colours belonging to the painter himself, that is to William Baker." =■ To this artist, evidently an English- man, may probably be ascribed the upper row of paintings, which, in design and execution, were very inferior to those immediately above the stalls. In 1489, the two collegiate foundations of Henry VI. presented a petition to the King in Parliament, setting forth "the great decaie and ympoveryshing " suffered by them during the last three reigns, and praying for the appointment ' Ecclesiologist, vol. viii. p. 290. = Eton Audit Roll, 1479—1480 ; Ibid. 1482 — 1483. '■^ Li I dovico Pal- mer pro spongiis einptispro picturis miindandis erga festuin Assuinp- tioiiis Beate Marie, x.\''- Et pro labore ejusdem Palmer el unius secum labor antis ad ipsas picturas in navi ecclesie mundandas, xxij''- "; Ibid. 1484 — 1485 ; Ibid, i486— 1487. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 412.) THE ANTE-CHAPEL. 91 of a commission to enquire into the titles of all the occupiers of estates formerly held by either College." .Their request was granted, and they soon succeeded in recovering a portion of their lost possessions. Eton College received several new endowments from private persons in the reign of Henry VII., among which may be noticed some land at Windsor Underoure, given by Dr. Bost. This Provost made permanent provision for an additional chaplain, who should be bound to say mass for him and his relations at least three times a week at the altar of St. Catharine, in the nave of the Collegiate Church.'' As this altar is elsewhere said to have stood near the south door,3 the row of niches now observable behind the statue of Provost Goodall must have formed part of its reredos. It was sometimes called " the altar of Thomas Jourdelay," after an inhabitant of Eton of that name, who was buried near it, in spite of his own directions that his grave should be dug in the churchyard.'' His widow, Alice Jourdelay, left ten marks for the purchase of a missal and other necessaries for this altar, and was also buried near it. 5 The corresponding altar at the north-eastern corner of the so-called ante-chapel was that of the Blessed Virgin.^ The other two which stood under the rood-loft, were dedicated to St. Nicholas and St. Peter respectively.' In addition to these altars, there were images ' Heywood and Wright's sta- tutes, pp. 382—385. " Indenture between Eton Col- lege and Queen's College Oxford, dated 9 September, 1506, preserved in the Library at Eton. 3 Eton Register, vol. i. f. 112. Will of Thomas Swan, 1480, who was to be buried " infra novam fabricam ecclesie Collegiate Beate Marie de Eton juxta Wyndesor, coram altari cwn imagine Sande Katharine proximo hostio aus- irdli." " Ibid. f. 124. Will of John Boraston, 1492. 5 Ibid. ft". 106, 115. Wills of Thomas and Ahce Jourdelay, 1468, 1483. <' Ibid.i. 136. Will of Elizabeth . Gosse, 1517, who desires to be buried " before owre lady at the north dore," and leaves 4='- " to the awlter also, wher I intend to lye, of owre lady." ^ Ibid. f. 120. Will of John Kent, i486; Ibid. f. 119. Will of Alice Ryall, i486, mentions four altars in the nave ; Ibid. f. 41. Will of Thomas Smyth, 1534, 92 THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. of the Holy Trinity, St. Anne, St. Andrew, St. Clement, St. Anthony, and St. Loo." It would be difficult to say how many figures there were of the patroness of the College. Her Assumption was represented on a large scale in the choir,^ and her image in the middle of the nave was adorned with costly dresses, gold rings, and silver shoes. 3 She guarded the south porch,* and the entrance of the choir.s and was also represented in stained glass in the east window, with her emblem '•' le Jylye potte " on a large scale.^ St Nicholas too appeared in several parts of the Church.? The jewels and relics used to be kept in the vestry on the north side.^ A chair of state covered with satin was left to the Church by Provost Bost, for the use of the King and other noble visitors.? It had doubtless done duty on several occasions, as, for instance, when the queen of Henry VII. came mentions " the four altars standing on a frunte under the crucifix of Eton Church.'' ' Ibid. fif. ii8, 124, 126, 127, 147- Wills of Nicholas Roche, Thomas Mede, John Durdaunt, Thomas Gyboy, and Robert Flecher. " Eton Audit Roll, 1479 — 1480. " Supra imaginem Assumptionis Beats Marie" ; Ibid. 1484 — 1485; Ibid. 1488 — 1489. It is said to be " in cancello." 3 Eton Register, vol. i. f. 115. Will of Ahce Jourdelay, 1482, " lego imagini Beate Marie de Eton in media ecdesie ibidem meani opli- mam zonam deaiiratam " ; Ibid. f. 118. Will of Nicholas Roche, 1485 ; Ibid. f. 119. Will of Alice Ryall, i486, who leaves a gold ring to the images of the Virgin in the choir and nave ; Eton Audit Roll, 1488 — 1489. " Pro calciamentis argeiiteis f metis pro imagine Beate Virginis in navi ecdesie ponderantibus fere iiij"'- uncias et dimidiam." * Eton Register, vol. i. f. 1 16. Will of Richard Clerk, 1485. 5 Eton Audit Roll, i486— 1487. " Pro positione imaginis Beaia Marie ad ostium ckori, et Sancii Nicholai in parte australi." ^ Eton Audit Book, 1505^1506 (ascribed to 1500 — 1501 in Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 409). ' Eton Audit Roll, 1452 — 1453. 'In denariis solutis Willelmo Is- hain pro portatione imaginis Sancii Nicholai ex dono Regis per Magis- trum Vice Prepositum, xx*" ; Ibid. 1484 — 1485. ^ Ibid. 1/^^,2—1^,^2,. " Pro j coph- ino empto Londoji et deliberatum Ludovico Palmer pro reliquiset jocalibns deportandis a vestibulo ad altare et 1 etro in diebus solem- nibus, viij''" ' Eton Register, vol. i. f. 129. Will of Provost Bost, November 5, 1503. " Tria capetia, le carpetts, cum uno pulvinari operto blanio serico ad serviendum Regi et aliis magnatibus in ecclesia.'' DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. 93 to Eton in March, 1502/ and also when the Pope's Legate came there accompanied by a Spanish grandee.^ Dr. Bost bequeathed to his successors his furniture in St. James's Hospital, and in the four rooms which then con- stituted the Provost's lodging at Eton.3 He died in February 1504,4 and Roger Lupton, an alien, was elected by a majority of the Fellows to occupy the place thus become vacant.^ This new Provost too had the honour of receiving several dis- tinguished visitors. The Bishops of Lincoln and Lichfield came to see the College in 1504 or 1505 ; ^ and about the same time a grand entertainment was given to the Countess of Richmond, who is so well known at Oxford and Cambridge as "the Lady Margaret."? The King himself dined in the Hall in October 1505, and thereby put the College to con- siderable expense.^ He does not appear to have made any halt at Eton on his way through the town in the following February, when travelling with his guest, or prisoner, Philip of Castile, but all the scholars were drawn up in line " along the barres of the chorche yeard " to welcome the two Kings.s William Horman, who was Head-Master at Eton for several ' Privy Purse Expenses of Eliza- beth of York, p. 3. ^ Eton Audit Roll, 1 501— 1502 " Pro vino et esculentis in refeciione dato Legato Pafe et una domino de Hispania" 3 Eton Register, vol. i. f. 129. " Omnia peripetasmata le hangynge iiij"'- cavierarum inearum cum quatuor culcitris plumaceis le fetherbedde,'' &c. ■• His monumental brass is now in Lupton's Chapel. There is a woodcut of it in Lipscomb's History of Bucks, vol. iv. p. 485. 5 Eton Register, vol. i. ' Eton Audit Roll, 1504—1505. " Pro expensis factis circa Episco- pos Lincolniensem et Cestrcnsem in ' Ibid. " Pro expensis factis in esculentis et poculentis datis Domine Margarete matri Regis, iiij'- vij=- vij"*- Et in regardis datis famulis ejusdem per M ag^istrum Preposi- tum, xx^' Et uni ducenti ferinam eodem tempore in regardo, xx"'- Et pro vino dato diversis extraneis in cubiculo Magistri Prepositi hoc anno, xx'*- " * Eton Audit Book, 1505 — 1506. " Pro expen.sis factis circa Domi- }ium Regem Henricum Septimum existentem in Collegia in prandio xxjo- die Octobris cum dominis aliis magnatibus, xiij'- ix"*- q." , « Tighe and Davis's Annals oj Windsor, vol. i. p. 444. 94 EDWARD POWELL. years in the reign of Henry VIL, will be mentioned in the following chapter as Vice-Provost. His successor, Edward Powell, ruled the School for a short time only," and, after obtaining several ecclesiastical preferments, died on the scaffold in 1540, for refusing to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy, and the validity of the divorce of Queen Catharine.^ ' Eton Audit Roll, 1495— 1496. | 1737) vol. i. p. 209; Wood's ^//^^;?(? " Dodd's Church History, (ed. I Oxonienses, \q\. \\. -p. 117. Gateway under Lupton's Tower. IS09— IS47- New Buildings — Benefactors — Property near London — Ecclesiastical Surveys — William H6rman — Resignation of Provost Lupton — liishop Aldrich — Funeral of Jane Seymour — Richard Cox and Nicholas Udall — The Eton Plays — Confiscation threatened — Funeral of Henry VIII. HE death of Henry VH. in 1509 did not in any- way affect the fortunes of Eton. His son and successor paid a visit to the College at the beginning of July in the following year, and was entertained at a cost of nearly 18/.' His offering of 13^'. 41/ in the Church, and his present of 3/. 6s. 8d. to the School-Master and the scholars was but a meagre return for the hospitality which he received.'^ The College, however, could by this time get on very well without royal subventions. Its revenue had increased so considerably that the charges for extensive building-operations could he de- frayed out of ordinary income. The old houses which still stood between the Cloister and the School- Yard were pulled down in 1516,3 and on the 2nd of March in the following year " the fyrst stone was layd in the fundacyon off the west part ' Eton Audit Book, 1509—1510. " LetUrs and Papers, {ed. Brewer) vol. ii. p. 1447- ^ Eton Audit Book, 151 5 — 1516. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 417.) 96 NEW BUILDINGS. off the College wheron is bylded Mr. Provost's logyn, the Gate, and the Lyberary." ' The design was furnished by Humphrey Coke, Henry Redman, and M. Vertue, the last of whom has been identified with a freemason of that name who, in 1505, contracted for the roof of St. George's Chapel at Windsor.^ Although the style resembles that of the original buildings, Double Doorway in the North Walk oi the Cloister. differences of detail may be detected, as, for instance, between a double doorway on the western side of the Cloister, and those on the northern and eastern sides.s The gateway was sur- mounted by a tower which is to this day called after Provost Lupton. Since his time, its exterior has been altered by the addition of a clock-dial and a pair of bell-turrets. All traces of paint have also disappeared from the carved figures on the ' Memorandum in Building Ac- counts. " Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 418. 3 See the cuts on pp. 96, 97. THE LIBRARY. 97 projecting window which forms a marked feature in the western side.' It is almost certain that the Library mentioned above as built in 15 17 and the following years, was the room now known under the name of the Election Hall. Some money was expended almost every year, at that period on book- Double Doorway in the West Walk of the Cloister. ^ binding, or on purchasing chains of various sizes wherewith to fasten the books to the desks.^ Inasmuch, however, as the charges, on this account are entered among the expenses of the Church, it appears that the vestry still served as a Library. The new apartment intended for the reception of the books • Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 418. ° From Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 441- 3 Eton Audit Books, 1519 — 1521. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 453 ; vol. iii. pp. 431, 432.) H ROGER LUPTON. was before long appropriated by the Provost, and it came to be known as " Mr. Provost's Hall." ' No attempt was made at this prosperous epoch to carry out the Founder's designs for the Church; but, in or before 15 15 a small chapel was built between two of the buttresses on the north side, entirely at the cost of Provost Lupton. In the carved spandrels of the screen which separates it from the choir may be noticed the initial R. of his Christian name, and the rebus of the letters LUP on a tun. The shield, on the boss of the groined roof of this chapel, bears the Lupton Arms augmented by three lily-flowers argent on a chevron which would otherwise be plain sable. Roger Lupton followed the example of his great predecessor Waynflete, in adding Eton lilies to his paternal coat ; and the Lupton family of Thame now bears these Arms,^ though of course it is only collaterally descended from the worthy Provost. Lupton supplied his chantry with valuable ornaments and vestments during his lifetime, and transferred to the College the manor of Puryton in Hertfordshire for the maintenance of a priest. By the arrangement which he made with the Fellows in 1516, there was to be a yearly distribution of money on the anniversary of his death. The Provost was to receive 2s. 8d. ; the Fellows, the Master, and Lupton's Chaplain, is. 4.d. ; the other Chaplains ' Mr. Clark (vol. i. p. 432) identi- fies the Library begun in 15 17 with the room over the gateway, now known under the name of the Elec- tion Chamber. Having generally accepted his conclusions with regard to Jhe buildings at Eton, I may briefly state my reasons for dis- agreeing with him in this instance. Firstly, the Election Hall has a range of windows on each of the long sides, like most mediaeval libraries, whereas the Election Chamber is lit from the two narrow ends. Secondly, it seems unhkely that the Provost's Hall would have been separated from his other rooms — which I agree with Mr. Clark (p. 439) in placing in the south-western part of the quad- rangle — by a Library common to him and other members of the College. Thirdly, the contemporary memorandum as to the work begun in 15 17, imphes that the gateway, with rooms above, was situate between the Provost's lodging and the Library. ' Burke's General Armory. , LUPTON S CHAPEL. ROGER LUPTON. 99 and the Usher, %d. ; the Clerks, 6d. ; and the Scholars and Choristers a penny apiece. This penny makes one of the three which are still given to each of the Scholars and Choristers every year on the 27th of February— " Threepenny day."" Lupton stipulated that his Chaplain should have his commons in Hall at the cost of the College, and a room to himself'' It is not clear whether the other Chaplains enjoyed this latter privilege. The Clerks certainly were still lodged two and two, as appears from an allowance made to one of them during his absence from the College, while his chum was lying dead.3 Lupton lived more than twenty years after completing the arrangements connected with his chapel, but the priest entered on his duties at once, and used to celebrate the Provost's exequies on the 21st of January. One of the earliest recorded appearances of the plague at Eton was in 1510, when it raged so fiercely that most of the scholars moved for safety to the neighbouring village of Langley.'* The Master who accompanied them thither was Robert Aldrich, afterwards Provost. He used to teach the Latin grammar according to the old Winchester system,^ but the introduction of Greek into the School is perhaps due to his exertions. Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, writing in 1556, says : — " I remember when I was a young scholler at Eton the Greke tongue was growing apace; the .studie of which is now a late much decaid. "^ ' The College has been accused of defrauding the boys by giving them this small sum instead of the value of half a sheep apiece, but on what grounds it is difficult to see.- The boys might more justly claim three shillings, on account of the change in the value of money since Lupton's time. ' The agreement, dated August 3, 8 Henry VIII., is among the muniments at Eton. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1525— 1526. " Rogero Whitworth clerico in re- gardo mense Decembris, fro absce- dendo seipso a Collegia ad tempus post obitum Hugonis Clerici con- cubicularis sui, \i]^- iiij''- " ■i Eton Audit Book, 1509 — 1510. The expenses were 7/. is. 4d. 5 Strype's Zz/« 0/ Sir Thomas Smith, p. 6. '' Warton's Life of Sir Thomas Pope, p. 226. n 2 100 PROSPERITY OF THE COLLEGE. Pope was probably a Commensal ; but no lists of his time have been preserved. One of the few incised brasses in the Church which have escaped destruction, records the death of " Richard Grey, Lord Grey, Cotenore, Wylton, and Ruthyn " in 1521," and represents him in the armour which he wore as henchman, or page-of-honour, to Henry VIII., from which we may infer that, by this date at least, the Founder's wish that the School should be frequented by the "sons of noblemen" as well as by "poor and needy scholars," had been realised. The College appeared to be in such a flourishing condition in 1525, that Longland, Bishop of Lincoln, gave orders that the three vacant Fellowships should be filled up, so as to raise the number once more to ten, as prescribed by Henry VI. The Provost and Fellows, however, answered that they were unable to obey the Visitor's mandate on account of the narrowness of their income ; ^ and so the matter was allowed to rest for another century. Two years later, Bishop Long- land held a visitation at Eton. 3 Cardinal Wolsey also cited the College to appear before him, though his right to do so was questionable, as he was neither Bishop of Lincoln nor Archbishop of Canterbury.4 He may perhaps have considered that, in the capacity of Papal Legate, he might with impunity override all ordinary ecclesiastical jurisdiction. A more friendly prelate was Nicholas West, Bishop of Ely, who had been elected from Eton to King's in 1483. At Cambridge he is said to have distinguished himself by setting fire to the Provost's Lodge, and carrying off some silver spoons. But " naughty boys sometimes make good men," and in after life " he would have quenched the fire he made in the College with his own tears ; and in expression of his ' Archaologia, vol. xxxii. pp. 58, 396, 400. = Sloahe MS. 4840, ff. 231, 232. 3 Ibid. ♦ Eton Audit Book, 1526 — 1527. " Apparitori domini Cardinalis citantis Collegium ad visitationem mense Juniiin regardo, ij'" BENEFACTIONS. loi penitence he became a worthy benefactor to the house, and rebuilt the master's lodging firm and fair to the ground." ' We do not know of his having any similar misdeeds to atone for at Eton, but we find him sending money to the College for the purchase of Church ornaments." Several other benefactors at this period may be dismissed in a few lines. John Argentine, Provost of King's, and phy- sician to Henry VIII., left to Eton a large silver ewer and basin ; 3 and Geoffrey Blythe, Bishop of Lichfield, left a large standing covered cup, which had been given to him by Ladislaus, King of Hungary.* Both these bequests have dis- appeared with the rest of the older plate. Robert Rede of Burnham left property for the celebration of an annual mass for his soul and that of Meriel his wife. He died in 1515, and was buried in the Church of Eton at the expense of the College.5 Thomas Smyth, alias Butler, a layman of Eton, also made an arrangement for the solemn observance of the anniversary of his death, " yerly while the world shall induer." The services were to consist of a " Placebo and Dirige by note, with vj. lessons with Laudis on nyght, excepte on pascall tyme, and on the morrow masse of Reqtiiem." While these offices were being said, there were to be four tapers continually burning round a cross over a herse " sett in the myddis of the body of the Church." The College undertook to pray for the souls of Smyth's relations as well as for his own, and to pay a small annuity ; but the price at ' Fuller' s Worthies — Surrey. The facts that West continued to hold his Fellowship till 1498, and that he took his degree in the re- gular manner, tend to discredit this story. = Eton Audit Book, 1525—1526. " In regardo data fainulo Episcopi Eliensis afferenti c marcas ad Col- legium pro ornamentis emendis ad templum, xiij=- iiij''- " 3 Eton Register, vol. i. f. 26. * CoUs MS. vol. xiii. f. 107. His will recites that he had, in liis life- time, given to the College various costly vestments, &c. 5 Lipscomb's History of Bucks, vol. iv. p. 489 ; Eton Audit Roll, 1514 — 1515. The account in Car- lisle's Grammar Schools, vol. i. p. 92, is utterly erroneous. I02 EXCHANGE OF LANDS. which these privileges were sold is not stated in the deed.' Smyth afterwards exhibited further proofs of his devotion by bequeathing money to the high altar, and "to the four altars standing on a frunte under the crucifix of Eton- Church." He also left legacies to various members of the College, and some plate for the high table.'' The Eton baker must have been an adept in his art, for when Henry VHI. was at Windsor he frequently had cakes from him. The Provost's servant who carried them up to the Castle generally received a fee of five shillings.s It would have been well for the College if the greed of Henry VHI. could have been so easily satisfied, for he soon began to cast covetous eyes on something more substantial than cakes. The Founder had, as has been seen, bestowed on Eton the Hospital of St. James at Westminster, + and successive Provosts had used a portion of it as an occasional residence. The property attached to it lay in several suburban parishes of Middlesex, most of which have, since that time, been absorbed into London. It did not yield any great rental in the early part of the sixteenth century ; but owing to its position it was certain to increase in value. The King was shrewd enough to perceive this, and in 1531 persuaded, or ordered, the College to effect an exchange of lands with him, justifying the saying :■ — ■ " Henricus Octavus took away more than he gave us." Lupton and the Fellows thereby surrendered the Hospital of St. James with all its appurtenances, reserving only the " White Bear " in Cheapside, a tenement in Westminster, and the estates called Chalcots and Wilds in the comparatively ' July 6, 1528. The original con- tract in the British Museum, Add. Charter 1557, has been transcribed and printed in Notes and Queries, vol. xii. p. 280. '' Eton Register, vol. i. f. 41. 3 Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VHI., (ed. Nicolas) pp. 52—64. '' Page 49. HENRY VIII. 103 distant parishes of Hendon, Finchley, and Hampstead. The property which thus passed to the King, was situated principally between Charing Cross and Hay Hill— sixty-four acres being on the southern side of the great thoroughfare now called Piccadilly, and ninety-four acres in "the North Field " on the opposite side of that road. Besides this there were eighteen acres at Knightsbridge, five at " Temmys meade," half an acre at " Chelsey meade," and two acres at Fulham.' It is difficult to estimate what the Eton revenue would now be if the College Bursars received the rents of the squares and streets which have since been built on this property. Henry VHI. dismissed the leprous sisters of St. James, pulled down the old buildings, and in their stead erected the Palace which still bears the name pf the patron saint of the ancient hospital." The King does not appear to have paid many visits to the College, though, of course, he frequently passed through the town of Eton. In 1 5 19, he celebrated the festival of St. George with great pomp, a month later than usual, on account of the Saint's anniversary falling on Easter Eve. He left Richmond on the 27th of May, and went first to Hounslow, where he was met by the Knights of the Garter and their suites, each Duke bringing with him sixty horses, each Marquess fifty and so on in proportion. The gorgeous cavalcade passed through Slough, and then through Eton, " where all they of the CoUedge stpod along in manner of procession, receiving his Grace after their custom." The Queen and the ladies of her Court had taken a shorter road from Colnbrook to Windsor, crossing the Thames by the ferry at Datchet.3 Stow observes that this feast of St. George was held " with as great solemnity as it had beene the feast of a coronation." '■ ' Original deed in one of the glass I cadilly,^. ^Zd. cases in the Library at Eton. '^ Ashmole's Order of the Garter. " Wheatley's Round about Pic- ! * Annals, (ed. 1631) p. 507. 104 THE REFORM A TION. Of course, no subject could emulate such a display as this ; but Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, used to live in great state, thereby incurring the jealousy of his royal cousin. He visited Eton in April 1521, and made an offering of half-a-mark " to our Lady," ' just a month before his execu- tion. Another distinguished visitor was the Lord Chancellor Audley, who came to Eton in 1535 or 1536, after having given the Provost reason to expect him on two occasions in the previous year.= The early years of the Reformation passed quietly enough at Eton. Lupton and the seven Fellows, without a single dissentient voice, formally repudiated the Pope's jurisdiction, and acknowledged the Royal Supremacy, in July 1534.3 H'enry VIII. seems to have wished to invest himself with the revenues as well as with the prerogatives of the Pope, and in this year obtained from Parliament a grant of the first-fruits and tithes on ecclesiastical property.* In the valuation which was made in the following year, the net income of Eton Col- lege was set down at a few shillings short of looo/., and the tithe, accordingly, at more than 99/.^ A subsequent statute, indeed, exempted from the payment of these tithes the two Universities, and the Colleges of Eton and Winchester, " where yowth and good wyttes be educate and noryshed in vertue and larning." But for a " perpetuall memoriall, and leste suche inestimable goodness and bounteouse gyfte by his Majestic at this tyme declared to his Universities and Colleges .aforesaid should be had in oblyvyon," each of these bodies was ordered to say solemn masses for Henry VIII., Queen Anne Boleyn, and the Princess Elizabeth, on the 8th days of May and October, every year.^ ' Letters and Papers, (ed. Brewer) vol. iii. p. 501. = Eton Audit Books, 1534 — 1536. 3 Rymer's Fcedera, vol. xiv. p. 505. ■• Statute, 26 Henry VIM. c. 3. 5 Valor Ecclesiasticus,{e.di. Hun- ter) vol. iv. ' Statute, 27 Henry VIII. c. 42. WILLIAM HORMAN. los Several inventories of plate, ornaments, relics, vestments, and books, drawn up at this period, and preserved among the muniments at Eton, deserve the attention of ecclesiologists. Among the items mentioned are : — " A coote of blewe velvett for our Ladie with rynges and dyverse brooches, with an image that my Lorde of Devonshire offred." " A parte of the nayle that our Lorde was nayled withall closed in silver all white." " A stone that Saint Stevyn was stoned withall." " Stones of Saint Wenefryd's well." Many of the items in these inventories are described as having once belonged to William Horman, the Vice-Provost. All the plate and the vestments which he presented to the College have disappeared since then, and only a few of his illuminated manuscripts remain in the Library, to make us the more regret the loss of the others. Horman was probably the most learned member of the College at that time, and was certainly an author of some reputation. A Wykehamist by education, he seems to have resigned his Fellowship at New College in 1485, in order to become Head Master at Eton, and he held that office from 1487 to the end of 1494, when he accepted the corresponding position at Win- chester.i He returned to Eton as a Fellow in 1502, and continued there until his death in 1535, at a ripe age, little short of a hundred years.'' His most important work is entitled " Vulgaria Puerorum" and was doubtless intended for use in the school at Eton. It consists of a collection of short English sentences, with their Latin equivalents, ar- ranged as in a phrase-book, according to the subjects. Many ' Kirby's Winchester Scholars, p. 79; Eton Audit Rolls, 1487—1494. Mr. Cooper claims Horman as a member of the sister University. AthcHCB Cantabrigienses, vol. i. pp. 53—54- = Epitaph incised on brass at Eton printed incorrectly in Lips- comb's History of Bucks, vol. iv. p. 489. lo6 WILLIAM HORMAN. of the sentences are interesting as illustrating the manners and opinions of the time. Thus we read : — " Children do lerne to swymme leaning upon the rynde of a tree or corke." " It is the custome that every yere we shal have a May Kynge." " I never had fantasy to playenge at the dice and tables." " There be smal clockis for a chambre to wake a man out of his slepe." " London speche and rayment is far fyner than Yorke." " The ymage of the patron of the churche must stande on the ryght hand of the autor." Of the Founder of Eton, Horman writes : — " King Henry doth many divers miracles." A sentence which he translates : — " Divus Henricus non una miraailorum specie inclarescit." The original contract between the author and Pynson, the celebrated printer, shows that the latter undertook to print 800 copies of the Vulgaria, in 1519, for 32/. 15^., — equivalent to some 400/. at the present time.' It has been calculated that the work could now be produced for half of this latter sum.' Horman dedicated his book to the Bishop of Lincoln, and obtained commendatory Latin verses from Aldrich, Master of Eton, from Lilly, the famous Master of St. Paul's, and from Lilly's son-in-law and subsequent successor, Rightwise, who had been educated at Eton. Two years later, Horman combined with his friend Lilly in defending their system of teaching Latin, against the attacks of Robert Whittington, who had chosen to call himself " Bossus." They ' Letters and Papers, (ed. Brewer) vol. iii. p. 118. •" See ail article by Mr. Furnivall in the Proceedings of the Philologi- cal Society. RE SIGN A TION OF L UP TON. 1 07 styled their reply "• Antibossicon^' and made several puns on the name of their adversary, which, they said, was derived from the Bosse of Billingsgate — a fountain in the shape of a bear. Horman accordingly wrote — " Nomine diviso, Bossus bos efficit et sus, Exjunctis Bossus protinus ursus erit!' The book also contains a large woodcut representing a bear being worried by dogs. As Dr. Maitland remarks, " Nothing could have been a more appropriate type of the style in which the controversy was carried on than a Billingsgate bear ; " and it is curious to observe that the language of that locality had the same sort of reputation in the sixteenth century that it enjoys now.' Horman died in April 153S ; and another change in the personnel of the College was caused a few months later by the resignation of Provost Lupton.^ The reasons which induced him to take this step are not stated, but it is quite possible that he may have felt some uneasiness as to the impending changes in ecclesiastical affairs. However this may be, he retained his stall at Windsor until his death, which did not occur until several years later. Lupton must have given some notice of his intended resignation beforehand, as the Fellows met on the very next day to elect a new Provost. There was no dissension among them, for they were in receipt of a letter from their " most loving and most illustrious prince," Henry VHI., who, as they well knew, could not be disobeyed with impunity. The proper forms were duly observed, and Robert Aldrich was declared to be the successor of Roger Lupton.^ Aldrich was the first Provost who had been educated at Eton and at King's College, in accordance with the Founder's wishes ; nor ■ Maitland's Early Printed Books in the Lambeth Library, pp. 415— 419. ' Eton Register, vol. i. 3 Ibid. io8 RICHARD ALDRICH. was he less qualified for the post in other respects. His learning was commended by Erasmus and Leland, the former of whom he had accompanied on his celebrated pilgrimage to Walsingham.' He had been Master at Eton for some years, but had resigned that office in order to go abroad on a mission to the King of France and the Pope. About a year after his election to the Provostship, Aldrich was elevated to the see of Carlisle, and for some time he attempted to discharge the duties of both offices. The audit books show that he was often absent from Eton, especially during the sessions of Parliament, for he was a keen politician.^ The College had to pay the rent of his house at Westminster, as the Hospital of St. James was no longer available. Some rooms lately added to the Lodge at Eton were nevertheless panelled, hung with tapestry, and fur- nished, for his use. A hall mentioned as forming part of the Provost's new residence may safely be identified with .that now known by the name of the Election Hall.3 In addition to his other preferments, Aldrich held the office of Almoner to the Queen — ^Jane Seymour — but only for a short time, as she died on the 24th of October, 1537, soon after giving birth to Prince Edward. Her dead body lay in state for nearly three weeks at Hampton Court, and thither Aldrich repaired in order to take his place in the procession which started for Windsor on the 12th of November. "The corpse was put in a chair covered with a rich pall ; and there- upon the representation of the Queen in her robes of estate, with a rich crown of gold upon her head, all in her hair loose, a sceptre of gold in her right hand, and on her fingers rings set with precious stones, and her neck richly adorned' with gold and stones ; and under the head a rich pillow of cloth of gold tissue ; her shoes of cloth of gold, with hose and smock, and all other ornaments.'' ' '^\c\q\'s % Pilgrimages of Eras- I " CooTpe.r\ Athence Cantab, tnus. I 3 Eton Audit Books, 1537 — 1547. TRAFFIC THROUGH ETON. 109 The hearse was drawn by six horses draped with black velvet. Henry VIII. did not appear at the funeral of his best-loved wife, having gone away, " leaving some of his counsellors to take order about her burial." The Princess Mary therefore rode as chief mourner between the Lords Clifford and Mountagu, and was followed by other ladies of the Court' The procession appears to have made a halt at Eton, for there was an unusual number of strangers inthe Hall that day, and an extra kilderkin of beer was consumed. The College authorities had employed labourers during the previous three days to repair the road between the Long Bridge and Baldwin's Bridge.'' The highway, indeed, seems to have been in a bad condition at this time, having doubtless been much injured by the heavy traffic connected with the building operations at the College. There were no turnpikes in the sixteenth century, and it was not unusual for the inhabitants of Eton to bequeath money towards the repair of the road between Windsor and Slough.s The last Head-Master who has been mentioned by name was Aldrich, and his two immediate successors were not in any way remarkable. The third, however, Richard Cox, deserves a passing notice on account of the celebrity which he afterwards attained. A native of the county of Bucking- ham, he gained admission as such to Eton, and thence duly proceeded to King's. At the age of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, he returned, in the capacity of Master, to his old school, "which was happy with many florishing wits, under his endeavours, and Haddon amongst the rest, whom he loved ' Strype's Ecclesiastical Memo- rials, vol. ii. part i. p. 11. = Eton Audit Book, 1537—1538- " Pro uno le kylderkey de byre empto in obitu Regine pro extraneis Ven- turis in Collegium, xij''- " " Et pro pabulo equorum domini Propositi quando redibat de Hampton Curte cuin Regina ad Collegium, xvj''- " 3 Eton Register, vol. i.ff. 107, 118, 147. Wills of Thomas Jourdelay, Thomas Champeneys, Nicholas Roche, and Robert Fletcher. no RICHARD COX. with filiall affection, nor will it be amisse to insert the poeticall passe betwixt them. " Walter Haddon to Doctor Cox his schoolmaster : — ' Vix caput attollens e lecto scribere carmen Qui velit, is voluit scribere plura. Vale.' " Doctor Cox to Walter Haddon his scholar : — ' Te magis optarem salvum sine carmine fill Quam sine te salvo, carmina mitlta. Vale'. " ' Cox was from the first a warm adherent of the Lutheran party in the Church, and he probably imbued some of his pupils with his own views. One of them, Robert Glover, embraced the new doctrines so zealously as to suffer death at the stake on their behalf^ Cox left Eton in 1534, and was subsequently appointed tutor to Prince Edward, and Dean of Christ Church. At Oxford he caused great scandal by being the first to bring a wife to reside in College ; but posterity will not judge him so harshly for this, as for his wanton destruction of the ancient treasures of literature and art that had until then been preserved in the various libraries at the University. In the days of persecution he fled abroad ; but he was afterwards appointed Bishop of Ely by Elizabeth.' Nicholas Udall, who succeeded Cox at Eton, was also inclined to Protestant opinions, though his manner of life was not such as to render him an ornament to any religious body. He undertook the management of the School in 1534, when he was about twenty-eight years of age, having already had some experience in teaching. A work which he had published under the title of Floiwrs for Latine Spekynge, selected and gathered oute of Terence, and the same translated into Englysshe, was doubtless taken into use in the School at Eton, and he was enabled to bring out a second edition in 1538. That year was ' Fuller's Worthies— Bucks. 1 ^ V^ooA'sAlhena: Oxonienses,No\. " Foxe's Acts and Monuments. I i. pp. 465 — 469. NICIfOLAS UDALL. Ill rendered more remarkable by the outbreak of a pestilence, which necessitated a temporary removal of the master and his pupils to Hedgerley.' During his tenure of office, Udall acquired a great reputation for the discipline which he used to maintain by a free use of the birch. Walter Haddon describes him as '' the best schoolmaster and the greatest beater of our time," ^ though he himself had left Eton just early enough to escape any personal experience of Udall's powers. Thomas Tusser, the author of the Five hundred points of good Husbandry, was not so fortunate in this respect, and records of himself: — ' From Powles I went, to Aeton sent To learne straightwayes the Latin phraise, Where fiftie three stripes given to mee at once I had. For fault but small or none at all, It came to passe thus beat I was ; See, Udall, see, the mercy of thee to mee, poore lad ! " The Eton tradition in favour of frequent flogging was maintained by William Malim, and, after a milder period, revived by John Keate. On one subject, however, there was a wide difference of opinion between Udall and Keate, for the former was as anxious to promote acting as the latter was to discourage it. It has been already seen that the Eton boys in the fifteenth century used to be entertained from time to time by the King's minstrels ; 3 but the exact date at which the College theatricals were introduced is unknown. An early notice of them occurs in 1525, when two plays were performed in the Hall at Christmas. + They afterwards became an annual institution, and a box full of "players' cloathes" was kept ' Eton Audit Book, IS37— IS38. ° Ascham's Schoolmaster, pre- face. 3 Page 78. * Eton Audit Book, 1525 — 1526. " Pro expends circa ornamenta ad duos lusus in aula tetnpore natalis Domini, x'^-" 112 " RALPH ROISTER DOISTER." in the room of the Master,' who generally undertook the management of the performances. There is every reason to believe that the earliest English comedy now extant was written by Udall for his scholars, and the history of its identification is singular. A small piece, styled " Ralph Roister Doister" was picked up by an old Etonian — the Rev. T. Briggs — in 1818, and by him presented to the Eton Library in December of that year, simply as a literary curiosity. The book had no title-page, and it was not until after it had been reprinted twice, that the name of the author was discovered, through the occurrence in it of the original of a passage quoted in Wilson's Rule of Reason, as being taken from " an interlude made by Nicholas Udall." Thus, by a strange coincidence, it proved that the volume presented' to the Eton Library was in fact the long-lost composition of an Eton Master of the six. teenth century.^ Inasmuch as the Rule of Reason was printed in 1551, and Ralph Roister Doisterin 1 566, the latter must have existed in manuscript only for several years. If we take into consideration the fact that Thomas Wilson had been educated at Eton under Udall,^ we may fairly surmise that he had become acquainted with the play in question by having taken a part in it, or, at the least, witnessed its performance, during his school-days. " The scene of Ralph Roister Doister is laid in London, so that in no slight degree it is a representation of the manners of more polished society, exhibiting some of the peculiarities of thinking and acting in the metropolis at the time when it was written. It is divided into acts and scenes, and is one of the earliest productions for the stage which ' A list of its contents is printed in Etoniana, p. 214. ^ Ralph Roister Doister has been reprinted at least six times since 1 81 8. The edition published by the Shakespeare Society contains a j Cooper, careful memoir of Udall by Mr. W. D. Cooper ; but the most accessible edition is that issued among Mr. Arber' s English Reprints. 3 This fact has escaped the notice of the various editors — even of Mr. NICHOLAS UDALL. 113 has reached us, in a printed shape, with these distinctions." ' Some of Udall's pupils seem to have cultivated the taste for acting which he had implanted in them, for when Queen Elizabeth visited Cambridge in 1564, an English play by him, called Ezekias, was performed before her, being " handled by King's College men only." ^ It cannot have been written for the occasion, as the author had been dead several years ; and it is natural to suppose that it was selected because some of the actors had already appeared in it on the Eton stage. Udall's career as Head-Master was brought to an abrupt termination by certain disclosures seriously affecting his character, which were made in the course of a curious in- vestigation at Westminster. It appears that a robbery of silver images and other plate had been committed at Eton in 1 541 by two of the scholars, with the assistance of the Master's servant. Cheney and Hoorde, both boys of good family, were summoned before the Privy Council, confessed their guilt, and were committed to custody ; as was also a London gold- smith, who was suspected of being their accomplice. They were all released a few days later, but only on very heavy bail, that of young Cheney being in no less a sum than 100/. In the meanwhile, Udall himself was examined on the matter by interrogatories, and, though seemingly innocent of the robbery, he had to confess to the most scandalous immorality. He was accordingly sent to the Marshalsea,3 and a certain Tyndall was appointed to succeed him at Eton.* The date and cause of Udall's release are unknown, but he evidently had some powerful friend at Court, and to him he addressed an abject letter. He begins by thanking his patron for a kind though ineffectual attempt to procure his " restitu- tion to the roume of scholemaister in Eton," which he had ' Collier's History of English j ^ Proceedings of the Privy Coun- Dramatic Poetry, vol. ii. p. 450. I cil, (ed. Nicolas) vol. vii. pp. 152, - Nichols's Progresses of Eliza- 1 153, 155, 158, 190, igi. belh, vol. iii. p. 177. 1 * Cooper, p. xxiii. I 114 NICHOLAS UDALL. desired " oonly of an honest purpose to discharge my debtes, and by little and httle as I might to paye every man his own." He then makes the most piteous entreaties for further favour : — " Noo sikeness, noo losse of worldly goddes, none ym- presonyng, noo tormentes, noo death, noo kind of other mysfortune could have persed my herte, or made in it soo deepe a wound as hath this your displeasure I doubte not but that it shall more redounde to your worship, by your clemencie to have made of an unthrifte an honest man, then through your extreme severitee to suffre me utterly to bee cast awaye. To hurte, to undoe, to spill a man is a thynge of small glorie, and easie for every man to dooe ; but to preserve, or to recover a man from present extinction hoc demum magni excelsique ac generosi est animi. .... . Accepte this myn honest chaunge from vice to vertue, from prodigalitee to frugall livyng, from negligence of teachyng to assiduitee, from play to studie, from lightnes to gravitee ; nor esteme it the wurse or the lighter, for that it begynneth of repentaunce, but rather persuade yourself that the same repentaunce shall still remein within my brest as a continual spurre or thorne to pricke and to quicken me to goodnes from tyme to tyme, as often as neede shall require." ' It was not until more than a year after his dismissal, that Udall obtained the arrears of his salary from the Eton Bursars.'' His subsequent career does not strictly concern us, but we may mention that it was chiefly devoted to literary pursuits. In the reign of Henry VIII. he produced a translation of the Apothegmes of Erasmus, and of his more celebrated Paraphrase of St. Luke. Under Edward VI., he was able to proceed further in the direction of Protestantism, by translating Peter ' Letters of Eminent Literary Men (Camden Society). " Eton Audit Book, 1542 — 1543. " Solutwn Magistro Udall pro sti- pendio siio a retro et aliis ei debitis pro officio suo dum informaret pueros, in plena satisfactione, \\\f- \\yf-" This entry was not known to Mr. Cooper or Mr. Arber. DEA TH OF L UP TON. 1 1 5 Martyr's Treatise on the Eucharist, which caused his name to be placed on the Roman Index. The accession of Mary did not affect him injuriously, and he superintended two dramatic performances in her presence, one of which took place at her coronation. Protestant opinions, and a notorious outrage on morality, did not prevent Udall from obtaining the Master- ship of Westminster School, about 1554. He died shortly afterwards.' The investigation resulting in the disgrace of Udall had been conducted, not before an ordinary court of law, but before the Privy Council, which then exercised authority in a great variety of cases. An order made by that body a few months earlier related to Bishop Aldrich, who was accused of having left his diocese for the sake of lingering at his comfortable residence at Eton, rather " than for any other just cause." He was accordingly commanded, on the King's behalf, to return forthwith to Carlisle, " there to remain for the feeding of the people, both with his preaching and good hospitality." ^ Aldrich was doubtless present at the funeral of his pre- decessor Roger Lupton, who died in the month of February 1540. This ex-Provost had left elaborate instructions con- cerning a feast to be held in the College Hall on the day of his funeral, and again at his " month's mind," 3 and for the daily tolling of a bell in the interval. He had provided more than 20/. for distribution among the various members of the College on these two occasions, more than 15/. for the poor and the children in the town, and 4/. for forty strange priests who were to say mass for his soul at Eton.* Lupton lies buried in his own chapel, where a monumental brass represents him vested in the peculiar cope then worn by the Canons of Windsor. Henry VHI., not satisfied with the exchange of lands ' Cooper, pp. i. — xxxiv. '' Proceedings of the Privy Coun- cil, (ed. Nicolas) vol. vii. p. 88. 3 For "Month's Minds" see Brand's Popular Antiquities, (ed. 1813) vol. ii. p. 213. ■• Will of Roger Lupton, in the Court of Probate. Alenger, f. 4. I 2 ii6 SUPPRESSION THREATENED. which he had concluded with the College in 1531, compelled the Provost and Fellows, eleven years later, to dispose of another portion of the former property of the Hospital of St. James. On this second occasion, he paid 52/. for "syx acres of meadowes lying near Chilcotthyll in the parishe of Seynte Pancrase and Marybone, in the countye of Middlesex, inclosed within his Grace's parke of Marybone," and fourteen adja- cent acres of wood.' The College was fortunately allowed to retain more than a hundred acres of land close to Primrose Hill, where a cricket-ground and several streets now take their name from Eton. This property is likely to yield a considerable revenue in the future. A worse danger, however, than any partial loss of lands soon threatened the College, for Henry VHL, having squan- dered the enormous proceeds of his previous acts of spolia- tion, obtained from the Parliament of 1545 a grant of all chantries, free chapels, hospitals, and colleges.^ Eton and Winchester, as well as the two Universities, were thus placed at his mercy, and their experience of his former proceedings was not reassuring. Their alarm has been characterised as "unnecessary" by the apologist of Henry VHL ;3 and it might seem incredible that the King should for a moment have thought of suppressing the principal seats of learning in the country. Yet it must be remembered that no consideration of the educational work carried on by the regular clergy up to the time of their dispersion had induced him to spare a single monastery. Mr. Furnivall mentions as " well known " the fact " that the post- Reformation grammar schools did not at first educate as many boys as the old monastic schools." " Henry VHL did indeed assure the Universities of his pacific intentions towards them ; but he seems to have contemplated the destruction of Eton. At any rate, his commissioners ■ Original deed at Eton. ' Statute 37 Henry VIII. c. 4. ^ Froude's History of England, (ed. 1867) vol. iv. p. 490. ■' Education in Early England, p. Ivii. SUPPRESSION THREATENED. 117 proceeded thither on the 27th of March, 1 546, and prepared a report on the annual revenue and expenditure of the College.' They then made a valuation of the ornaments and plate preserved there, setting down the former at more than 312/., and the latter at almost 3,000 ounces. Their inventory records that these goods were " delyveryd and commytted " by them to the Provost and College, " to be safelye kepte, usyd, and preserved, to the use of our seide soverign lorde, untill his highnes further pleasure shal be signyfied and declared in that behalf" No order was made as to the future disposition of the revenue, but the Fellows knew pretty well what to expect. One of them wrote on the counterpart of the commissioners' indenture an appropriate quotation : — " Fuit Ilium et ingens Gloria Teucrorum, ferns omnia Jupiter Argos Transtulit, incensa Danai dominantur in urbe." The death of the tyrant himself afforded little security against further molestation, so long as his rapacious courtiers retained office and influence. Eton has never seen a more gorgeous procession than that which accompanied the corpse of Henry VIII. from West- minster to Windsor. The highway had been cleared and mended, and the various parishes lying on it had received "hatches and escotcheons of armes," as well as grants of money, so that no place was without some signs of mourning. According to the custom of the time, there was laid upon the coffin an effigy of the deceased King " with the true imperial crown on the head, and under it a night-cap of black sattin, set full of precious stones ; and appareled with robes of crimson velvet, furred with minever, powdered with ermine, the collar of the Garter, with the order of St. George, about the neck ; a crimson satin doublet embroidered with gold, two ' Part of this report has been I ians, p. 74, but only from Huggett's printed in Creasy 's Eminent Eton- ' imperfect transcript. ii8 FUNERAL OF HENR V VIII. bracelets of gold about the wrists set with stones and pearl, a fair armoury sword by his side, the sceptre in the right hand, the ball in the left, a pair of scarlet hose, crimson velvet shoes, gloves on the hands, and several diamond rings on the fingers." The chariot was " drawn by eight great horses, trapped with black, adorned with escutcheons, and a shaffedon on their heads, on each of which rode a child of honour carrying a bannerol of the king's arms. Thus with an exceeding great train of four miles in length the body was conducted to Syon," on the 14th of February. On the following morning, all the lords and their attendants "marched forth from town to town, where they were received in procession with the priests and clerks of every parish on each side of the way censing the corps, as the day before ; and all the bells rung in every church against their coming. And so they proceeded till they came to Eton, where along the churchyard wal were the Bishop of Carlile (the Provost), in p07itijicalibus, and al the fellows and masters of the said Church, in their best ornaments and copes ; and by them al the young children scholars of the College in their white surplices, bare- headed, holding in the one hand tapers and in the other bookes, saying the seven psalms ; and as the corps came by, kneeled and censed it, bidding their de profundis, and other prayers. And so the corps passed till it came to the town of Windsor." ' ' Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor, vol. i. p. 557 ; Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 302 — 304. Rebus of Provost Lupton. 1547— ISS8- Bishop Longland — Suppression of Colleges — Sir Thomas Smith — Mar- riage of the Clergy — Charges against the Head-Master — Inquest on a Scholar — Changes in the Church — Roger Hutchinson — Destruction of Books, etc. — The Marian Reaction — Provost Cole. OHN LONGLAND, Bishop of Lincoln, and consequently Visitor of Eton, did not long survive Henry VIII., to whom he had for many years acted as confessor. He died at Woburn in May 1547, and the instructions which he left as to his interment are somewhat curious. By a will dated soon after the accession of Edward VI., he directed that his heart should " be conveyed to Lincoln Churche and there buried afore the most blessed sacrament at the high aulter," but that his body should be buried in the choir at Eton at the place at which the Epistle was read " yf it please the Maister and company to licence the same." He left five marks to be distributed among the "maisters, felowes, mynisters of the queere, and scholers " of Eton, and various other small sums to members of the College, and to the bell-ringers. In return for this he stipulated for a dirge, lauds, commendations, and a mass of requiem. His most valuable legacy to his College consisted of the works of Chrysostom, Hilary, Origen, Bernard, and Athanasius, and the Sermons of Augustine, all of which were to be chained I20 JOHN LONGLAND. in the Library." An epitaph at Eton used to testify to the due performance of at least part of his dying instructions : — " Hcec cedes corpus, Wobtrnia viscera, servat, Atque pium sedes cor Cathedralis habei." This inscription once formed part of an incised brass, on which Longland was represented in full episcopal costume ; = but every trace of this memorial has been destroyed by some act of vandalism within the last two centuries. The Bishop's elaborate chantry in the south choir-aisle at Lincoln has fared better, and still bears the punning inscription : — yonga ttrra nt^irsuram t]m Jlomi«n£ kbit, with the Arms of the King between the fourth and fifth words. In the first year of Edward VL an exchange of lands, which had been arranged with Henry VIIL, was concluded ; and the College thereby acquired several advowsons and estates that had formerly been held by the regular clergy.3 It was part of the adroit policy of the Government to make all classes in the country accept some share of the confiscated property, so as to ensure their opposition, through motives of self-interest, to any scheme for the re-establishment of the monasteries. The very existence of Eton College, however, was again threatened by another bill for the suppression of all colleges, chantries, and free chapels. The University of Cambridge was seriously alarmed ; t but the friends of learning were sufficiently powerful in the House of Commons to carry a clause, specifically exempting the two Universities, the Col- leges of Winchester and Eton, the chapels at Newton and at Windsor, and the cathedral churches of the kingdom.s ' Will of Bishop Longland, in the Court of Probate, London: A/en, f. 39. vol. iv. p. 474. "• Strype's Life of Sir T. Smith, p. 29. RawUnson MS. B. 267. 1 = Statute i Edward VL c. 4. Lipscomb's History of Bucks, \ THOMAS SMITH. 121 It was soon after the passing of this Act, that Aldrich resigned the Provostship of Eton, in order to devote himself exclusively to his diocesan and parliamentary duties. The Duke of Somerset, who was then supreme, selected his own Master of Requests for the vacant post, and despatched a letter to the Fellows in the name of the King, requiring them to elect Dr. Thomas Smith : — ■ " And to thentent that ther myght be no stop nor lett to the same bycause the sayd Thomas is not priste or Doctor of Divinitie, or otherwyse qualyfyed as your statutts dothe requyre, we consyder3'nge his other qualitees, thexcellency wherofe so far surmount the defect that this before rehearsyd shold make, have dysspensyd and by these presents do dis- pense with you, and the said Thomas, and any other that shall admytt the same, with and for all suche thyngs or matters as shold in any wyse stope or lett the same election. Where fore, as our trust is of your gentil conformytie therin, so we do not dought but in thaccomplyshment of this oure pleasure you shal have cause to thynk yourselfe furnyshed of such a Master, or Provost, as apperteynythe. Geven under our sygnett at our honor of Hampton Court, the xxv. day of Decembre, the fyrst yere of our rayne." ' The Fellows lost no time in obeying the royal mandate, and elected Smith on the 29th of December, 1547, thus setting a precedent which was subsequently followed in the cases of Savile, Murray, and Wotton. It is very doubtful whether Smith was in deacon's orders, as stated by Strype ; but, shortly after this, he accepted the Deanery of Carlisle.^ Cole, who succeeded him at Eton, could hardly endure the mention of his name, and indignantly described him in the College Register as " quidam laicus et conjugatus." In other ■ Eton Register, vol. ii. f. 2. " Strype's Life of Sir T. Smith, p. 31 ; Eton Audit Book, December 30, 1547. " Solutti?n Magistro Coldwyn Vicefreposito et Magistro Willyat equitantibiis in negoiiis Collegii ad dominum Episcopum Lincolniensetn pro admissione novi Prepositi, ut patet per billam, xlv^ 122 SIR THOMAS SMITH. respects Smith was well qualified to preside over a seat of learning. At Cambridge he had been distinguished for his scholarship, and he had travelled as far as Italy. In con- junction with Cheke he had introduced a new manner of pronouncing the lately revived Greek language, by making a distinction between the letter iSira, and the various diph- thongs of which it forms part. He was also anxious to reform the English language, but on a converse principle, by adapting the spelling to the pronunciation. With this object he compiled a phonetic alphabet consisting of thirty- four letters, in which, among other innovations, there was a long form as well as a short one for each of the vowels. C was to be abolished, except when it was to be sounded like the Greek ;^, but the author was hardly consistent when he retained the letter Q. The scheme was fore-doomed to failure, as alterations in a living language can only be effected gradually. Soon after his election to the Provostship, Smith was appointed one of the Secretaries of State, and received the honour of knighthood.' The duties of office naturally called him away from Eton for long periods ; but once he was detained in London against his will, being compelled to share the temporary confinement of his patron, the Duke of Somerset. There is in the British Museum a small manuscript volume,^ entitled : — ■' Certaigne Psalmes oi' Songues of David, translated into Englishe meter by Sir Thomas Smit/i, Knight, then Prisoner in the Tower of London, zvith other prayers and songues by him made to pas the tyme there, 1549." One of the prayers commences thus : — " We can not forget o Lord in all our cares and thoughts at this present tyme the wofull estate of this Realme which is outwardly with foreyne enemies assailed and within sore ■ Strype's Life of Sir T. Smith. \ " King's MS. 17, A. xyii. Sm THOMAS SMITH. 123 shaken with this eyvil dissencon as well of the comons here- tofore as of the nobilitie ; thend whereof is only knowen to thee, greatly feared of us even in our great feares. This Realme o Lord shuld be, and is, a chosen Realme to thee, to which thou hast vouchsaved to give the true knowledge of thi veritie and gospell, first by the late King of most famous memorie, Henrie the eight, and now more amply by his most swete sonne the King's majestie that now reigneth through the admonicon, advise, and counsell of his loving uncle who is now one of us in perill and danger." There is some variety in the metres employed in the other portion of the volume, but the quality of the verses is uni- formly bad. The following is a very favourable specimen : — " If I have gone about to hurt any man Or for to sowe discorde. Than let them hurt me as thei can. And help me not o Lorde. But if I have alwais sought for peace And labored discord to remove. Than help me thou, though thei do not cease To pursewe me, for thi love." The collection is chiefly interesting as exhibiting the kind of composition to which a man of learning and high position was not ashamed to affix his name. Sir Thomas Smith recovered his liberty after a short imprisonment, but only on disgorging a large sum of public money which he had em- bezzled.' At Eton he was treated with great deference. His predecessors and successors have been styled " Master Provost," or " Mr. Provost," but the Fellows generally styled him simply " our Master." ^ Several members of the College hastened to follow the example of Sir Thomas Smith in marrying, although it is difficult to see how they could justify so distinct a breach " Froude's History of England, I ' Eton Audit Book, 1550— 1551. vol. V. p. ■•&#».Aii*7 I 124 MARRIED PRIESTS. of the statutes. Richard Williat for instance, one of the Fellows, openly bequeathed money to his wife, by a will dated in the fourth year of Edward VI.' The dismissal of several Chaplains, who were no longer required for the celebration of solitary masses, may have provided rooms for the reception of women and children, the very thought of whom would have scandalised the pious Founder. Barker, the Master, received a royal licence in 1551, enabling him to retain his post, although he was avowedly married ; ^ but such proceed- ings were regarded with aversion by the stricter portion of the community. A married priest was considered capable of almost any enormity, and Barker had already come in for his share of abuse. William Goldwyn wrote to Sir Thoma's Smith on the 5th of May, 1549, to explain : — " Where ill reportt hathe byn that the Scholmaster shuld be a disepleyare, cardeare, riatore, or gaimeare, nott applyeng his schole trewlye, that reportt is manifestlye false, for I know he is none of that sortt. I can fynd no faught in hym butt (as I have honestly informe hym) he is sum- what to gentle and gyvethe his scholears more licence thane they have byn usid too before tyme, of the wiche thing evill tounges mey spred mutche matter and diffame withe owt care of ony good redresse. I trust there be no suche in owre cumpanye." ^ One of Barker's pupils met with an untimely fate, which led to one of the few inquests that have ever been held within the Liberty of the College. From the account of the pro- ceedings on that occasion, it appears that one of the scholars named Robert Sacheverell was in the " pleyeng lease " about seven in the evening on the 29th of July, 1549, and there went to bathe at " le watring-place " with some of his com- panions. While in the water he was carried away by the ' Eton Register, vol. ii. f. 46. I 3 Domestic State Papers, Edward Cooper's Athefta Cantab, vol. i. ' VI. vol. vii. No. 4. pp. 275, 556. 1 THE REFORMATION. 125 stream to a place known as "le whirlpole," and so dis- appeared. The jurors therefore pronounced "that water execrable, and the cause of his death ; on whose soul may God have mercy." ' This last sentence has a Catholic sound, but, in point of fact, the College authorities had followed the successive changes in matters of religion. Sir Thomas Smith had been a supporter of the Reformation from his earliest years, and several of the Fellows shared his views. The changes under Henry VIII. had been chiefly political, but those under Edward VI. extended to the services of the Church. About a month after the election of Smith, the images at the high altar were pulled down and carted away ; ^ and the College lost no time in purchasing a book of the Homilies and a copy of the new Communion-book.3 In 1551, the embroidered frontals of the other altars were sold, the Provost and such of the Fellows as wanted any, buying them for their own purposes.-* This confirms a well-known statement by Heylin : — " Many private persons' parlours were hung with altar cloaths, their tables and beds covered with copes instead of carpets and coverlets ; and man}^ made carousing cups of the sacred chalices, as once Belshazzar celebrated his drunken feast in the sanctified vessels of the Temple. It was a sorry house, and not worth the naming, which had not somewhat of this furniture in it, though it were only a fair large cushion, made of a cope, or altar-cloth, to adorn their ' Eton Register, vol. ii. f. 42. " Unde dicunt aquam illam exe- crabilem et caiisam fuisse mortis illius. Cujus anitnce misereatur Deiisr '' Eton Bursars' Accounts, 1547 1548. ^' Solututn laborantibus circa summicm alLare in subver- tftido et exportando sculptilia, y'f- v\\f-" January 25, 1548. 3 Ibid. " Pro libra homeliarum, ■nVf- " January 5, 1 548 ; Ibid. 1549 — 1550. "Pro libra Commic- nionis, iij'^- viij"*- " * Eton Audit Book, 1550—1551. " Received of our master for a front and a frontell of whyte damaske and a red frontell, iij'' v'*' iiij''- " &c. 126 ROGER HUTCHINSON. windows, or make their chairs to have somewhat in them of a chair of state.'' ' One of the purchasers of frontals was Roger Hutchinson, a good patristic scholar for his age, who was in the habit of making Greek quotations in his writings and discourses. He pubhshed a work entitled The Image of God, in 1550, and being afterwards elected a Fellow of Eton, he there delivered three sermons on the Lord's Supper. His views on that sacrament were decidedly anti-Roman, although not always quite consistent. In one place he uses a local analogy to express his doctrine : — " The body and blood of Jesus Christ be in His holy supper, as thy house, with thy garden, and other commo- dities, is in thy lease, which thou hast by the College seal of Eton or of Windsor." ^ In another passage, he distinctly says that " the natures of bread and wine are changed and altered" after the consecration. 3 Hutchinson did not indulge in such scurrilous language re- specting his adversaries as many writers of his party, and he was sufficiently liberal to appreciate the services rendered to the nation and church by men like Henry VI. : — " Noble benefactors, which did build houses and endow them with lands for the good education of youth, for the reward of learning, and that this realm should be furnished with godly and learned preachers, are slandered as super- stitious and popish founders. It shall be better with the heathen at the day of judgment than with us ; for they honoured their benefactors, we deprave and deface them, and accuse them of superstition and folly." + Hutchinson took part, as a Fellow, in suppressing the observance of seven of the festivals appointed by the Founder. Extra commons had hitherto been allowed on ' History of the Reformation. " Hiitchi7tsori s Works (Parker Society), p. 251. 3 Ibid. p. 277. < Ibid. p. 309. ECCLESIASTICAL CHANGES. 127 twenty-five days of the year, but, after the autumn of 1 5 5 1 • the College authorities utterly ignored the feasts of the Death and Translation of Thomas Becket, of Corpus Christi, of Relics, of the Nativity and Assumption of the Virgin, and of the Dedication of the Collegiate Church.' The Reformers also turned their attention to the Library, and set five men to work there for six days in 1548.^ It is not clear whether the " purifying " then attempted was moral or material — whether it was intended to get rid of " superstitious " books, or merely of spiders and cobwebs. At any rate, some of the books were sold a few years later to a bookbinder at Cambridge.^ Perhaps the Provost and Fellows were afraid of the penalties of an Act of Parliament, then recent, under which the collectors of old missals, breviaries, and the like, are said still to be liable to fine and imprison- ment* They cannot have had much perception of what books ,were really superstitious, if we may judge by the only MS. which is known to have been then turned out of the Library. It is a copy of the Bible ! s An attempt was made at this period to change the formal designation of the College, by inserting a mention of the Fellows, and by omitting the name of the Blessed Mary as patroness ; but a lease granted in the name " Prcepositi et Sociorum Collegii Regalis de Eton" was declared void by the judges in the next reign,* and served as a warning to the Puritans a hundred years later. ■ Eton Audit Book, 1550—1551. The money for all the festivals was allowed at the Audit, but the names of those mentioned above were afterwards cancelled in ink. " Eton Bursars' Accounts, 1548— 1 549. " Circa bibliothecam novam purgandam." 3 Eton Audit Book, 1550— 1551. " Received of John Pother boke- binder of Cambridge for certeine boks in the librarye, xl^- " * Statute 3 and 4 Edward VI. cap. 10. s This MS. Vulgate is in the British Museum, Titus A. xxii. It was given to the Eton Library by Provost Lupton ; but passed into the collection of Sir Robert Cotton in, or before, 1 596. ^ Dyer's7?f/o;'/j-,p. 150, a. Trinity Term, 3 and 4 Philip and Mary. 128 S/J? THOMAS SMITH. The few alterations that were made in the fabric of the College in the reign of Edward VI. were chiefly designed to promote the comfort of the Provost. Sir Thomas Smith evidently found the company of his wife more agreeable than that of the Fellows, and took to having his meals at his " lodging," instead of in the Hall. A new kitchen and cellar were accordingly built for his exclusive use, and the sum of lOO/. was yearly allowed to him for his diet. In addition to his cook, this Provost used to keep one "gentleman," two valets, and three grooms. The College used to maintain his stable at a cost of about 60/. a year.' He seems to have lived in grand style, and it is expressly stated that " he used to wear goodly apparel, and went like a courtier." ^ An incidental mention of the Master's chamber in one of the audit-books at this date shows that it must have been situated at the end of the Long Chamber.3 Another curious entry records the payment of %'^s. "to Matthew Bargman and ten others watching the Colledge when theves shuld have robbyd it." "> The latter may have had designs upon the buttery, for an inventory taken in December IS SO, shows that the Church would not have yielded a rich booty. Most of the ornaments must have been already confiscated, for the list specifies only five patens and chalices (probably one set for each of the altars), a pair of candlesticks, two censers, a chrismatory, a pix, and four staves for the rulers of the choir, in all less than 300 ounces of silver. But when the views of the foreign Reformers obtained more general acceptance, even this diminished number of church ornaments was considered superfluous, and was " exchaunged at the commaundment of ' Eton Bursars' Accounts, and Audit Books, 1547 — 1551. "Our master's new seller," &c. ' Strype's Life of Sir Thomas Smith, p. 32. 3 1552—1553. "Paide to John Fendall for workinge abowte com- ynge owt of the Scholemaster's chambr into the Childes Chamber for I day & di, after x''- the day & vij''- his servaunte, ij'' j''" " Ibid. A ROYAL COMMISSION. 129 the King's cownsell, as appeareth by the lettre subscribed with their hands, anno Edwardi VI''. 7°. And with that was bought and provided plate for the buttarie," viz. various silver wine-pots, jugs, and bowls. One chalice alone was retained for use. The College of Eton had been included in the scope of the commission which was appointed, in November 1 548, to visit the University of Cambridge ; ' but Provost Smith, who was one of the commissioners, seems to have persuaded his colleagues that they need not interfere with him in his own province. In 1552, however, five members of the commission — the Lord Chancellor, Bishop Ridley, Sir John Cheke, Dr. May, and Dr. Wendy — were ordered to proceed to Eton without delay. They arrived there on the 14th of May, when " Mr. Riley the Vice Provost appeared. Hurland the Usher, and Avise, a Fellow, were warned to appear ; and Fawding, one of the Fellows, was committed to the Fleet for lewd words.'' " Affairs cannot have gone on very smoothly after this, for, in the next year, Edward VI. recorded in his own journal under the date of the 26th of September : — " The Duke of Northomberland, the Marques of North- ampton, the Lord Chamberlain, Mr. Secretary Petre, and Mr. Secretary Cicel ended a matter at Eton College between the Master and the Fellows ; and also took order for the amendment of certain superstitious statutes." 3 The only allusion to these proceedings, among the Eton records, is to be found in the audit-book, which notices the expense incurred when the Duke of Northumberland and others dined in the Hall. Less than a year after this date, Mary was securely estabhshed on the throne of England, and the Duke of ■ Domestic State Papers, Edward VI. vol. V. no. 13. ' Strype's Ecclesiastical Memo- rials, vol. ii. part 2, p. 9. 3 Burnet's History of the Refor- mation, (ed. Pocock) vol. v. p. 85. K I30 THE MARIAN REACTION. Northumberland had paid the penalty of treason with his head. The Provost and Fellows would not have been so ready to dispose of their " Crosses, relics, crucifixes, Beads, pictures, rosaries, and pixes," ' if they could have foreseen the reaction which set in upon the death of Edward VI. They must have found themselves in a difficult position ; but they tried to escape notice by complying with the revived ceremonial. Two months after the accession of Mary, the high altar was set up or repaired,^ and a little later, the hol}--water stoup was replaced in its old position near the door. 3 The English texts which the Reformers had caused to be painted on the walls of the Church were also effaced.^ Before any further changes could be carried out, the married Fellows were expelled for their breach of the statutes, and members of the opposite party were substituted for them. Three new Fellows were admitted on one day ; = but even after this, opinions were so evenly divided in the College, that it was found impossible to fill up a vacant place by the ordinary process of election, and the right of nomination was allowed to lapse to the Bishop of Lincoln. Sir Thomas Smith found it prudent to resign the Provostship in July IS 54, possibly in consequence of a journey under- taken by one of the Fellows " to Wynchester to the Bishope of Lincole our visitor, for the resolution of certeyne doubts in our founder's statuts." ' A few days before Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain, the same Fellow, Pauley, rode " to Farnam, to exhibit a supplication to the Quenes majestie for fre election accordinge to our founder's wyll and ordinances." ^ This latter mission must have proved fruitless, as Henry Cole • Butler's Hudibras. ' Eton Audit Book, 1552 — 1553, September. 3 Idid. ISS3— 1554- Ibid. "For blotting out the j ''Ibid. Scripture on the Chirche walles." 5 March 2, 1554. ' Eton Audit Book, June to September 1554. HENRY COLE. 131 seems to have been nominated by the Queen to succeed Smith. At any rate he was elected Fellow and Provost on one day, in spite of the adverse votes of a minority of the Fellows.' Sir Thomas Smith is said to have been allowed 100/. a year, in compensation for the loss of the Deanery of Carlisle and the Provostship of Eton ; == and the College accounts mention a payment to him of 50/. " for the lease of Cottesford," which had been granted to his brother, John Smith.3 Henry Cole, the new Provost, was a man of considerable note among the members of his own party. He had been educated on Wykeham's foundations, and, during the reign of Henry VHL, had held several ecclesiastical preferments, of which the most important was the Wardenship of New College. In the next reign, he is said to have professed himself a follower of Peter Martyr, and he has thereby incurred the accusation of being a mere time-server. It appears, on the contrary, that he resigned all his places before the death of Edward VI., finding it impossible to keep pace with the changes in matters of religion. His zeal and learning fully entitled him to the favour which Queen Mary showed him.* Under Cole's direction, the Church at Eton was, as far as possible, restored to its former condition. The rood and the side-altars were again set up, and the College barber was directed to clean the painted walls of the choir, and decorate Lupton's Chapel. s The re-introduction of the Sarum rites involved the purchase of various books — Kyries, Alle- luias, and Sequences— 2lS well as of chrismatories, bells, and chalices.^ " An image of our Ladie of Assumption " cost 3/. ; ^ and a magnificent suit of white damask vestments ' Eton Register, vol. ii. '' Strype's Life of Sir Thomas Smith. 3 Eton Audit Book, and Lease Book. * Cooper's Athena Cantabrigi- enses, vol. i. p. 419. 5 Eton Audit Book, June to September 1554 ; Ibid. 1556— 1557 (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 443.) ^ Eton Audit Book, 1553—1554. ' Ibid. 1557—1558- K 2 132 THOMAS LEWIN. embroidered with the same subject, and with liHes emblem- atical of the Virgin and of Eton, cost no less than 9/.' In one instance, at least, restitution was made by Srr Thomas Smith, who sent his servants to the College " bringinge a clothe of tyssew from Ankerwyke."^ The ex-Provost may have taken it away for his own private chapel, where as late as the eleventh year of Elizabeth he kept a chasuble and alb.3 It was during the short period of the revival of the old services that Thomas Lewin, Alderman of London, bequeathed to the College the reversion of an estate at Cippenham, which still bears his name. He stipulated that an obit should for ever be kept for him and certain of his relations in the parish church of Burnham, that the College should yearly pay 3^-. \d. to the churchwardens "to have masse before the image of Jesu there," loj. to priests, clerks, and bell-ringers, and also 6s. Zd. in alms to the poor on Good Friday. Failing the performance of these conditions, the property was to lapse to the Company of Ironmongers, of which the testator was a member.'' Lewin died in ISSS, and the distribution of spiced-bread and wine at his elaborate funeral in London has been duly chronicled by a fellow- citizen. 5 The widow survived till 1562, by which date the College had become released by law from any obligation to say masses ; * but the preacher at Burnham on Good Friday, to this day receives 3^^. 4^/. for himself, and distributes i6j. 8ii'^)\o\. I "^ S/atute x\-id. THE BOY BISHOP. 149 churches, the authority of these mock-prelates used to be absolute from the latter date to Childermas, or Holy Innocents' Day. The young bishop and his assistants were generally styled " Nicholas and his Clerks," and were dressed exactly like the clergy whose duties they parodied. We have direct evidence of this at Eton in the mention of a rochet for the Boy-Bishop in old documents.' This abuse was tolerated even by the enlightened Dean Colet, who ordered the boys at St. Paul's to hear a Child-Bishop preach a sermon on Childermas Day. Although prohibited by a proclamation of Henry VHI. in 1543, it survived in some parts of England till the reign of Elizabeth. The profanity of the proceedings is scarcely extenuated by the plea " that there might this at least be said in favour of this old custom, that it gave a spirit to the children ; and the hopes that they might at one time or other attain to the real mitre, made them mind their books." = The mummery of the Boy-Bishop was not the only enter- tainment permitted at Eton in the later part of the year, for, at the end of November, the Master chose plays for public performance by the boys at Christmastide. Malim admits the levity of these representations ; but he pleads in their defence that nothing is more conducive to fluency of expres- sion, and a graceful deportment. The plays were usually in Latin, but English ones were sometimes selected if specially clever and witty.^ Udall's comedies were doubtless popular. ■ Eton Audit Book, 1507— 1508. " Pro reparatione le rochet pro episcopo puerorum, xj^- " In an inventory of the reign of Henry VIII. it is described as a present from James Denton (King's, 14.86) English Poetry, Strutt's Sports arid PastzmeSjHont'sAnaent Mysteries, Walcott's IVilliam of Wykeham, p. 205, Murray's Handbook to the Southern Cathedrals, vol. i. p. 115, and Strype's Ecclesiastical Memu- for use at St. Nicholas's time, which rials. confirms Brand's theory. ^ The entries in the Audit Books ^ For further particulars about 1 about the plays are so numerous, Boy-Bishops see Brand's Popular ' that it will be sufficient to give a Antiquities, Warton's History of few specimens. 1525—1526. "Pro I50 ETON LIFE IN 1560. The regular school work was suspended from the 20th of December till the Epiphany. During that interval the only- instruction given was in the art of writing, in which, to judge by specimens still extant, the Eton boys were adepts. The more industrious scholars, however, got through a good deal of work at this time, for they used daily to vie with one another in verses, epigrams, and speeches. These exercises were purely voluntary, and were carried on almost without the knowledge of the authorities. But in case any boy seemed too much absorbed in his studies, the Mast-er would urge him to take part in the games of his schoolfellows. No work whatever was done on Christmas Day, and the boys went to bed at seven, because in previous times they had been obliged to rise between three and four for matins. On all church festivals at Christmastide, the boys played in the afternoon and evening near the fire in the Hall, but on school days they played there in the evening only. We may supplement Malim's account of the School discipline, by a few notes respecting the position of the Commensales in the middle of the sixteenth century. The original scheme of Henry VI. had offered gratuitous instruc- tion at Eton to an indefinite number of boys, who in other expensis circa ornamenta ad duos lusus in aula tempore Natalis Domini, yS-" ; 1548 — 1549. " Soltt- tum informatori pro vj berbis juxta A'''-, v^' Solutuni eidetn pro iiij ly whyte zzxXvs, juxta v''-, ■x.x.^- " ; 1550 —1551. "To Mr. Usher for an interlude that was plaide in the Haull, vj=' viij'*'"; 1552 — 1553. " To the Scholemaster for beardds to the players in Christenias, vj=- yijjd.j; " Item paid to Grave for a horse lock delyvered at Chrystemas laste paste at the commandement of my Lord of Mischief, viij"*- " ; 1556— 1557. "For mendinge of the players raymente, viij''- Item to the mynstrells, ij'- vj'^-" ; 1557 — 1558. "Delyveryd to Mr. Schole- master at playes, iij=- ix''-" ; " Item candells for the playes and the children, ip-" ; 1566— 1567. "To Mr. Scholemaster for his charge setting fiirthe ij playes ig"- Martii, ■ vuj° 1568—1569. "For ij dossen of links at iij''- the linke for the childrens showes att Christ- mass, vj<*-" ; 1572 — 1573. "Forvj poundes of candles at the playes in the Halle, i.\'^-" THE COMMENSALS. 151 respects were to be maintained by their relations ; and the statutes contemplated two classes of these independent scholars, corresponding to Gentlemen Commoners and Commoners respectively. The audit-books show that the former took their meals in the Hall at the table with the Chaplains, Usher, and Clerks, while the latter sat with their schoolfellows who were members of the foundation. There can be little doubt that the number of these original Oppi- dans increased considerably soon after the dissolution of the monasteries. The charges for their board also increased rapidly, partly in consequence of the depreciation in the value of money. The following is the earliest bill for an Eton boy which has been preserved. It was addressed to Sir Gilbert Dethick, Garter King of Arms, and may with certainty be referred to one of the earlier years of the reign of Mary. " Mr. Garter, After most hartye commendacions unto you, theise shalbe to lett you understande that the commons are raysed \f- weeklye in every commensall. Soe that the some for Nicholas your sonne commeth to xvj^' tother expenses for washinge and other necessaries are particularlye mencyoned undernethe Imprimis for store monye ij'" viij''' Item for washinge xvj''- Item for paper viij'^' Item for candles iij'*' Item for quarters stipend vj''' viij''- Summa xj'"' vij'*" I am bold to troble your mastershipe with my letres att this present, because I must paye a great deal of monye nowe out of hand. I pray you sende itt by this bringer, or els the next weke by one of your servants Yours to comaunde to his power William Grene, Usher of Eton." ' " Gentleman^ Magamne, a.d. 1838, vol. ii. p, 490. 152 THE COMMENSALS. It would appear from the above, that the Master and Usher had already begun to disregard the express command of Henry VI., that they should impart instruction gratuitously to all comers. Nicholas Dethick must have been a Commen- sal at the lowest table, where the charge for board about this period was a shilling a head per week, which just covered the expense incurred by the College. Each mess of four boys, whether foundation Scholars, or Commensals, received food to the value of twopence at every meal, with an extra penny- worth at supper on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. A further sum of \s. i^d. was allowed in the week "for breade, drink, otemell, and sause," so that the total cost of the commons was y. i \d. a week in each mess. Every Com- mensal at the second, or gentlemen's, table paid \s. 8d. a week. The fare at the high table was of course much more luxurious. Strangers paid twopence, three halfpence, or a penny, for a meal according to the table at which they were placed.' The entertainment of them was thus a source of profit rather than of loss to the College. The next Eton boys of whom we have any particular account were the two sons of Sir William Cavendish, who were taken there in 1560. Their stepfather, Sir William St. Loe, writing to his wife, the well-known " Bess of Hardwick," says :— "The Amnar^ saluteth the, and sayeth no jenttlemen's chyldren in Ingland schalbe bettar welcum, nor bettar looked unto then owre boyes." Henry, the elder of the two, a godson of the Queen, was nearly ten years old, and William Cavendish was just a year younger. The bill for their expenses begins on the 21st of October, when they lodged at the inn, and there entertained the two sons of Sir Francis Knolles, whom they regaled with pottage, boiled and roast mutton, chicken, bread, and beer. ' Eton Audit Book, temp. Mary. | - i.e. Almoner, or Bursar. THE CAVENDISHES. 153 They appear to have dined with their young friends on the following day, as the only payment recorded was for their servant's dinner. On the third day of their residence at Eton, they moved into lodgings kept by one Richard Hylles, who undertook to keep them and their attendant for i T)S. ^d. per week, exclusive of firing. A few days later, they gave a breakfast to " the cumpanye of formes in the scole according to the use of the scole ; " but as the breakfast cost only sixpence, the number of guests cannot have been large. On the 1 6th of November, some furniture arrived at the wharf and was thence conveyed to the lodgings. The two brothers soon after this began to dine and sup in the College Hall, paying il. ^.s. a month to the Bursars, so that they must have been Commensals at the second table. The books used by them in school were Cicero's Atticus and de Officiis, Lucian's Dialogues, yEsop's Fables, and Edward VI.'s Latin Grammar. Most of thfe entries on the bill relate to candles or to articles of dress, among which may be noticed the gowns of black frieze then worn by Oppidans as well as by Collegers. Both the Cavendishes must have been very extravagant in shoe- leather, as they had new pairs of boots at Easter, Whitsun Day, and the other great festivals. In the course of a single year each of them bought seven pairs, and those belonging to the younger brother were constantly undergoing repairs. A curious charge of 6d. occurs every term as " quarterydge in penne and ynke, brome, and byrche." On one occasion they gave threepence " to a man, to see bayre bayting and a camell in the Colledge, as other schollers dyd." ' William Cavendish was afterwards created Earl of Devonshire ; and many of his descendants have, like him, received their education at Eton. ■ Retrospective Review, Second Series, vol. ii. pp. 149—155. i5S8— 1595- Fall of Provost Cole— Election of William Bill— Ecclesiastical Changes — Addresses of the Scholars to the Queen — Election of Richard Bruerne — Visitation of the College — Election of William Day — French Hostages — Fast-days— Dispensation to the Fellows— Royal Visits. HE accession of Elizabeth in November 1558 effected a great change in the position and pro- spects of Provost Cole, who had allied himself so closely with the persecuting faction in the late reign, as to have become an object of aversion to many of the Reformers. Regardless of con- sequences, he boldly proclaimed himself an opponent of any further ecclesiastical innovations. He soon had an oppor- tunity of defending his principles, at a formal disputation held at Westminster Abbey, in March 1559, between several prominent representatives of the two religious parties. Being selected as the first spokesman on his side, he argued at some length in favour of the retention of the Latin service-books.' According to Jewel's account, Cole stamped, raved, snapped his fingers, and frowned at his adversaries, styling them fire- ' Burnet's History of the Refor- mation, (ed. Pocock)vol. ii. pp. 615 -616 ; vol. V. pp. 514 — 529. A ROYAL COMMISSION. 155 brands, and authors of heresy.' The conference came to an abrupt termination on a question of procedure ; and Cole was declared contumacious, fined 500 marks, and deprived of his preferments. He was eventually committed to the Fleet prison, and ended a memorable career in such obscurity, that even the date and place of his death are not known with certainty.^ In the meanwhile a royal commission was issued, ordering Sir William Cecil, Sir Anthony Cook, and Drs. Parker, Bill, Haddon, May, Wendy, Home, and Pilkington, to hold visita- tions at Cambridge, and at Eton, and to tender the oaths of allegiance and supremacy to the principal members of the various colleges.^ Five days after the date of this document, William Bill, one of the comrnissioners, was elected to a Fellowship at Eton, and within the next fortnight he was advanced to the Provostship, by an unanimous vote. The see of Lincoln was then vacant by the deprivation of Bishop Watson, and that of Canterbury by the death of Cardinal Pole, and so the Vice- Provost and Fellows. had to present their new chief, for confirmation, to the Dean and Chapter of the metropolitan church of Canterbury.4 The College Regis- ter does not make any direct mention of a royal mandate, but there is an entry in the audit-book of a payment made " to hym as browght the queues majesties letters " on the 8th of June, which probably had reference to the election. At any rate the Fellows must have felt sure that their choice would be approved in high quarters. The commissioners were so well satisfied with these signs of loyalty to the Queen, and of respect to one of their own body, that they abandoned their intention of holding a visitation at Eton. ' Burnet's History of the Refor- vtation, (ed. Pocock) vol. vi. p. 407. ' Strype's Annals of the Refor- mation, (ed. 1824) vol. i. p. 248. June 20, 1559. Cooper's A thence Cantabri- • * Eton Register, vol. ii_ff. 31, 32. gienses, vol. i. p. 418. I June 25 and July 5, 1559. iS6 WILLIAM BILL. William Bill, the new Provost, was a self-made man. He had been educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, but on such slender means that his election to a Fellowship had to be postponed for a time, in consequence of his inability to pay the trifling sum of money then claimed by the Crown as first-fruits. He rose to be Master of his own College, and afterwards of Trinity College, whence, however, he was summarily ejected by Mary.' On the Sunday immediately following the accession of Elizabeth, Bill was the preacher at St. Paul's Cross, which has been described as "the oracle before which whoever would prognosticate the coming changes, whether in advance or in retrograde, would take his stand and listen in eager expecta- tion." ^ On this, as on other occasions, Bill assumed a moderate, pacific tone, and he seems always to have been willing to receive his instructions from the Court. That men of his calibre were scarce, may be inferred from the fact that at one and the same time he held three such important posts as the Provostship of Eton, the Mastership of Trinity College, and the Deanery of Westminster. He was moreover Chief Almoner to the Queen, and on this score he obtained from the Vice-Provost and Fellows, leave of absence from Eton for an indefinite period. 3 Nevertheless we find him spending about fifteen weeks in a year at the Lodge,-* which must have proved a convenient residence when the Court was at Windsor. The first action taken by the new Provost was the pro- curement of a royal licence for the annual election of Scholars.5 Ecclesiastical changes were introduced with cau- tion. During the first two years of the reign of Elizabeth, ' Cooper's Athena Cantabri- gienses, vol. i. p. 210. " Milman's St. Paul's Cathedral, * Eton Audit Book, 1560 — 1561. ^ Idid. 1558—1559. "Mr. Pro- vosts servaunts expenses to the P- 255. I Courte for licence of the election, 3 Eton Register, vol. ii. I iij*- i'f-" ECCLESIASTICAL CHANGES. 157 the full number of festivals enjoined by the Founder were observed in the Hall, and the old system of obits was main- tained : ' epitaphs requesting prayers for the dead were still allowed to be set up in the Church.'' On the other hand, the use of the Sarum Missal was discontinued, and new Com- munion Books and Psalters were purchased. 3 The College soon combined with that of Winchester, and with the two Universities, in a petition for leave to conduct divine service in Latin, so that the scholars might be familiarised with that language. The Queen granted this request by letters patent, only stipulating that in those Colleges which, like Eton, possessed churches instead of mere chapels, special services in the vulgar tongue should be provided for the parishioners.'> The high altar at Eton was spared until Elizabeth had occupied the throne for a full year, but was finally destroyed on the 9th of November, 1559.' A year and a half later, it was replaced by a communion table, surmounted apparently by boards inscribed with the Ten Commandments.* It was at this latter date that the beautiful mural paintings were effaced. They suffered this indignity at the hands of the College barber, who received six and eightpence " for wypinge cute the imagery worke uppon the walles in the Churche." ^ The material eriiployed was, doubtless, mere whitewash, and thus hidden, these interesting works of art remained comparatively uninjured to our own age. It was reserved for the " restorers " of the nineteenth century to destroy with ■ Eton Audit Book, 1558—1559. ^ Brass of Robert Stokys in the Church (Lipscomb's History of Bucks, vol. iv. p. 488), and epi- taphs of John Belfield, and of " Sir Alexander Phihppe, Chantrie preist for Doctor Lupton " now missing. Shane MS. 4843, f. 349. 3 Eton Audit Books, 1558— 1559, 1559— 1560. * Strype's Annals, vol. i. p. 223. April 6, 1 560. 5 Eton Audit Book, 1559 — 1560, f. 246. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 442.) ' Ibid. 1560— 1561. "To the joyner for a table frame and the selinge behinde the Communion Table, and for ij fraymes of the Tables for the Commandments, x"' Mali, xl^- " ' Eton Audit Book, 1560 — 1561. 158 THE MURAL PAINTINGS. chisels and scrapers as many of the paintings as could not Mural Painting in the Church.' effectually be concealed from view by the canopies of the new stalls. ' See p. 89. Vmcen: BruoULajS-ouu Iji HEAD II from one of the taural pamlir^s la xtie Chureh al Eton, rtrduced froir a drdwii^ by R-K iisbex. VERSES TO THE QUEEN. 159 The Eton scholars were not tardy in declaring their devo- tion to Queen Elizabeth, as is evinced by a small volume of Latin verses now preserved among the MSS. in the British Museum.' It professes to be a new-year's gift to the Queen^ and the names of the contributors enable us to fix its date with tolerable certainty as 1560. The collection comprises the productions of forty-four boys in the upper forms ; but more variety is observable in the metres employed, than in the subject-matter of the verses. All the compositions abound in fulsome flattery, and in prayers that Elizabeth will gratify her loyal people, as well as her own inclination, by contracting an early marriage. Edward Scott, one of the first contributors, writes : — " Di tibi dent natos, exoptatiimque maritum, Di faxint nati tit sint similesque tui." Thomas Gillingham prays : — " Di stirpem tibi dent, Elizabetha, piam." Others follow in the same strain, the style of their Latinity exhibiting a vast improvement on that of William Paston. The Queen had at this time two suitors at least on hand. Jewel writes : — " The Swede and Charles, the son of Ferdi- nand, are courting at a most marvellous rate. But the Swede is most in earnest, for he promises mountains of silver in case of success. The lady, however, is probably thinking of an alliance nearer home." ^ Prince John of Sweden attended the Court to offer his own and his brother's new-year's greetings on the very day on which the young Etonians presented their verses.3 At the beginning of August in the same year. Provost Bill persecuted Elizabeth with another collection of Latin verses, ' King's MS. 12, A. Ixv. I ^ Strickland's Queens of Eng- ■■ Zurich Letters {Ta.xk^rSoc\eiy), tattd, (ed. 1843) vol, vi. p. 194. vol. i. p. 46- i6o ROYAL VISIT. epigrams, and acrostics, neatly written in one hand, and adorned with illuminations of the arms of England and Eton.' Most of the compositions are of a purely compli- mentary character, with reference to the Queen's visit to Windsor. Richard Craswell for instance foreshadows the manner of her reception : — " Ardua purpurea velentur tecta tapete. Altera Vyndsoram Debora dara petit. Fragranti patidce spargantur flore fenestra;, Et flavas nectat parva Jiiventa comas!'' Others again express a hope that the Queen will soon marry. Out of the forty-three young poets whose names are given in the volume, twenty-eight were elected scholars of King's College in 1561 and the three following years.^ Although Elizabeth did not follow the advice so freely given by the young match-makers, she came to see their school in 1560 or 1561. The audit-book mentions a payment of 151^. " for fyve burthens of russhes to strewe Mr. Durston's chamber against the Queue's commynge," and another of \\s. to two cooks who came from Westminster to assist in the kitchen. Durston was one of the Fellows who had been elected during the Marian reaction ; he must have exhibited more loyalty towards Elizabeth on this occasion than he did when next summoned to acknowledge her authority. Dr. Bill was not destined to enjoy his numerous preferments for long, as he died just two years after his election to the Provostship. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where an epitaph says of him that he was a quiet man " et bene perfecit multa loquendo paruin!' ^ The parish-clerk at Eton received two shiUings for " ringynge Mr. Provoste's knyll, 17 Julii," 1 561.* By a will, dated a short time before his decease. Dr. Bill bequeathed to the College a quarter of his theological library, ' MS. at Hatfield House. | enses, vol. i. p. 211. ^ Registrum Regale. \ ■* Eton Audit Book, 1560— 156 1, 3 Cooper's Athcnce Cantabrigi- \ f. 272. RICHARD BRUERNE. i6r and also the sum of 40/. for providing a good coverlet for the bed of every Scholar.' A silver seal, originally engraved for him, was used by successive Provosts until a few years ago.^ The Fellows had exercised such an unusual amount of power during the frequent absences of Dr. Bill, that they did not hesitate to decide, on a successor to him without awaiting any instructions from Court. Their choice fell upon Richard Bruerne, who was elected on the 25th of July, and formally installed in the choir of the Church a week later.s Bruerne was a Bachelor of Divinity, and had formerly held a Fellow- ship at Eton, so that he was well qualified for the office of Provost, according to the statutes. Nor was he deficient in learning, for his adversaries acknowledged him to be '' an excellent Hebraist.'' ♦ On the other hand, his sympathies lay with the Roman party, and, worse still, he had been guilty of immorality so scandalous that he had been obliged to resign the Regius Professorship of Hebrew at Oxford.^ Following the precedent set in the case of Dr. Bill, the Fellows accorded leave of absence to the new Provost, who was thus enabled to retain a stall at Christ Church, and another at Windsor.^ The boldness of these proceedings aroused the indignation of reformers and courtiers alike. Bishop Grindal wrote to Secretary Cecil complaining that " ytt is a shame thatt suche a sorte of hedge-priestes shulde presume so farre upon any obsolete statute, knowynge the Queens majesties prerogative " Will in the Court of Probate, London. Loftes, f. 37. " Eton Audit Book, 1559— 1560, f. 251. " For three ounces of silver for a seale belonginge to Mr. Pro- vosts office, xv=- Item for the grav- inge thereof, 1=-" Mr. Pettigrew has fallen into the extraordinary- error of calling this seal " that of the Church, college, and parish of Eton." Journal of the British ArchcBological Association, vol. xii. p. 60. The original matrix was so broken that it had to be recast for the late Provost, Dr. Goodford. 3 Eton Register, vol. ii. ff. 43, 44. ^ ZurichLetters(Fa.Aei Society), vol. i. p. 66. 5 Idiii. p. 12. ^ Eton Register, vol. ii. f. 44 ; Wood's Antiquities of Oxford, vol. ii. p. 849 ; Le Neve's Fasti, vol. ii. p. 517. M l62 VISITATION OF THE COLLEGE. so long exercised without interruption, and that they shulde doo it inipune, or that it shulde stande in force." " A royal letter was thereupon despatched to Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, ordering him to summon some of the members of the old commission, and forthwith to hold the visitation of Eton so long postponed. The commissioners were specially instructed to examine into the circumstances of the late elec- tion, when the Fellows " without our assent or without our pleasure therein by them sought, have chosen one to be their Provost, of whom there is disperst very evil fame." == The Archbishop addressed the notice of the intended visitation to the " Provost," Vice-Provost, and others,3 although the depri- vation of Dr. Bruerne was a foregone conclusion. The Col- lege gave a handsome fee to the bearer of the document, and at once despatched the Vice-Provost to London ; + but all attempts to avert the impending disgrace were fruitless. The Archbishop came to Eton accompanied by two of his colleagues. Home, Bishop of Winchester, and Sir Anthony Cook ; 5 and the investigation commenced in earnest on the 9th of September, 1561. The Provost at first challenged the authority of the commissioners, urging that it had expired at the end of a year from the time of their appointment. On the production of the Queen's letter, only a few weeks old, he withdrew his protest, and put in a formal appearance. He was accompanied by the Vice-Provost, three Fellows, the Master, William Malim, the Usher, five Chaplains, four Clerks, and a notary public. Three Fellows — Kirton, Ashbrooke, and Pratt — and one of the Chaplains named Leg did not appear, and ' Domestic State Papers, Eliz. vol. xix. no. 18. August 11, 1561. ^ Domestic State Papers, Eliz. vol. xix. no. 30 ; Strype's Me- morials of Parker, vol. Hi. p. 28: •' Eton Register, vol. ii. f. 44. '■ Eton Audit Book, 1560 — 1561, f- 273. 5 Ibid. " To my Lord Canter- buries pawntler, iij^'- Item to his cooke, iij=- Item to Sir Anthony Cooks servaunt, iij^- Item to Mr. Scholemaster for golde foyle, read and white, to set forth the College armes at the visitacon, xxij''- " RESIGN A TION OF BR UERNE. 1 63 were accordingly deprived of their places for contumacy. The like penalty was inflicted on John Durston, one of the Fellows, who, though he answered to his name, refused to acknowledge the Royal Supremacy. The Provost escaped the indignity of a formal dismissal by tendering his resignation ; and the com- missioners decreed that he should receive 10/. from the College funds in compensation for his disappointment.' When writing to report the proceedings of the Commis- sion, Archbishop Parker expressed a hope that the Queen, in nominating a new Provost to the College, would take care " that that princely foundation might be so preserved, that it might tend to the flourishing of the realm ; and not serve some private men's affections or commodity." In a letter to the Secretary of State, the Archbishop suggested the names of Richard Cheney, " a good, grave, priestly man," and of Andrew Pierson, his own almoner. He specially pointed out that they were both Bachelors in Divinity, and unmarried ; and added, with some irony, that except for the fact " that neither of them had been in Germany, and peradventure by a frailty had been at Mass in Queen Mary's time," he should consider them unexceptionable, and incomparably superior to some more zealous Protestant candidates. He also mentioned the name of Alexander Nowell, in case the Queen would consent to appoint a married clergyman. Elizabeth's strong feelings in favour of clerical celibacy were well known, and by no one better than by Parker himself, to whose wife she had administered a characteristic rebuff. Cecil considered the Archbishop's list of candidates too circumscribed, and applied for advice to the Bishop of London. Grindal, in reply, sent in no less than fourteen names, specially designating four men as married, and four as unmarried. The former were Nowell, Aylmer, Mulleyn, and Wattes. The ' Heywood and Wright's Sta- tutes, pp. 634—638; Strype's Me- morials of Parker, vol. i. pp. 205 — 206; Eton Audit Book, 1560 — 1561, f. 264. M 2 164 WILLIAM DA V. latter were " Mr. Cheney, Mr. Robinson, chapleyn to my Lord of Canterbury, who made a very good sermon yesterday at the Cross, Mr. Daye of Cambridge, and Mr. Calfhille, both eligible by the statutes." ' The Queen's choice eventually fell upon William Day, who was duly elected Provost on the i8th of December, 1561.'' Dean Nowell was not aware that his name had been proposed, and so was not disappointed,3 while Cheney and Aylmer were soon afterwards raised to the episcopal bench. As soon as the election was ended, one of the Fellows went to London to acquaint the Secretary of State with the result, and subsequently went to Cambridge to conduct the new Provost to Eton in state.* If Elizabeth had nominated Day on account of his celibacy, she soon had occasion to repent of her choice, for having thus obtained good preferment, Day proceeded to marry a daughter of Bishop Barlow, a prelate whose five daughters all became the wives of bishops.^ Day had been educated at both the great colleges of Henry VI., and he was the younger brother of a former Provost of King's. Unlike his brother, he had espoused the cause of the Reformation, and had preached before the Convocation of the clergy in which the Articles of Religion were framed. He is described as "a man of good nature, affable, and courteous, and at his table and in other conversation pleasant, yet allwayes sufficiently retaining his gravity." He had '' a good plain fashion of preaching apt to edify, and easy to remember." ^ In Convocation, Day had given his vote against the reten- tion of the ceremonies, and in his first year at Eton he gave ' Strype's Memorials of Parker, vol. i. pp. 207 — 209. " Eton Register, vol. ii. f. 91. 3 Churton's Life of Nowell, p. 68. ■• Eton Audit Book, 1561 — 1562. " For Mr. Atkynsons expenses ryd- inge to London with 'letters to Mr. Secretarie Cicell, 18 December, 21s. Item for Mr. Atkynsons expenses rydinge to Cambridge to fetche Mr. Provost 1° Januarii, 4/. \\s. Sd." 5 Cooper's Athena Cantabrigi- enses, vol. i. p. 279. * Harrington's Nugce Antiques, (ed. 1779) vol. i. pp. 77—79. THE PLAGUE. 165 orders " for puUynge downe a Tabarnacle of stone in the bodie of the Churche," and "' for whitinge Doctor Lupton's Chapell." ' He reduced the number of Chaplains from six to four ; and he seems to have taken for his private use, or alien- ated, some of the College plate, for the audit-books contain several notices of the carriage of the plate to Queenhithe, near the Tower of London. In the second year of Day's Provostship, the plague made its way to Eton, and the house at Cippenham, which the College had just acquired by the death of Mrs. Lewin, proved very useful for the reception of some of the boys.^ The tenant there was thenceforth bound by a clause in the lease to take in six scholars free of charge for the space of one term ; and this arrangement continued until the erection of Sanatorium in 1844. The violence of the pestilence drove Elizabeth away from London, and she moved to Windsor in October 1563. The Eton scholars again greeted her with a collection of Latin verses, now preserved in the British Museum. 3 The little volume contains seventy-two composi- tions, but the number of contributors was smaller than on the previous occasion some of the boys sending in as many as six sets of verses apiece. Among the most prolific poets may be noticed Giles Fletcher, afterwards Ambassador to Russia ; Longe, afterwards Archbishop of Armagh ; and Bound, after- wards Vice-Provost of Eton. Many of the vei'ses can be read backwards as well as forwards, while others form acrostics on the name of Elizabeth, or on the letters of the alphabet. The ' Eton Audit Book, 1561— 1562. 'Ibid. 1563—1564. "ToShep- perdes vviffe and others for making cleane the house at Cipnham for the children the iij of June, xvj''- Item for strawe for the children beddes, iiij"*- Item given to Foster the carriar for his paynes labouring at Cipnham aboute provision for the children of Colledge there iij of June, xij"*- Item for a padd locke for the buttrye doore at Cipnham." 3 King s MS. 12, A. xxx. It is exhibited in one of the glass cases among the specimens of fine book- binding. The cover is of white vellum impressed with the Royal Arms, scrolls, etc., in the style of the period. i66 VERSES TO THE QUEEN. volume also contains several poor illuminations of the College Arms, probably executed by William Malim, the Master, who wrote four lines in Greek on the reverse of the title-page, and described himself as " iXepfio'; 6 MaXc'/^o? KavTovapieu<; t?)? twi/ Alrcoviecov o-p^^oXJj? apy^ihLhdcrxo^o'i!' His pupils vied with one another in the extravagance of the compliments which they addressed to the Queen. With more loyalty than reverence, they compared her to Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Gideon, Samson, Samuel, and Judith ; and the heathen mythology was also called into requisition : — " Nempe Minerva, Venus, Juno, tibi 7nunera clara Distribuunt, corpus Venus eximium, tibi Juno Divitias Arabunt gazas, gemmasque nitentes, Virtutem Pallas quce nan peritura vigebit'' A comparison to Lucretia must have been especially soothing to a princess whose fair reputation had already been attacked by calumny. In a preface in Latin prose, the light which centred in Elizabeth was reflected back on both her parents, at some sacrifice of consistency. The author (evidently Malim himself) could hardly have had the sad story of Anne Boleyn very clearly before him, when he described her seducer and eventual executioner as " qiiadain divina Providentia tanquam Semideus." The volume concludes with a Latin prayer that the Queen may be preserved from the plague ; but the real object of the offering is stated more clearly in the preface. The boys are there made to request the Queen, if she is pleased with their productions, to bestow some mark of her favour on " our dearest master, by whose kindness and extreme watchful- ness, by day and by night, we have in a short time attained such proficiency in hterature," and " not to suffer him to be oppressed by any grievous want, or to be ground down by ceaseless labours and studies," after twenty years of work at Eton and Cambridge. Malim is elsewhere described as a good FRENCH HOSTAGES AT ETON. 167 scholar, who, after taking his degree at King's, had travelled as far as Constantinople and Jerusalem.' His pupils may really have been anxious that he should be promoted, or, at any rate, removed, for we read of several of them running away from Eton " for fear of beating." This event created some sensation at Windsor, and a conversation on the subject in Cecil's rooms at the Castle, induced Roger Ascham to compose his celebrated treatise on education, entitled " The Schoolmaster." " Another occurrence of a graver nature brought the College under the immediate notice of the Secretary of State at this time. It had been found desirable to place De Foix, the French Ambassador, under some restraint, in retaliation for his royal master's ill-treatment of Sir Nicholas Throgmorton ; and rooms were provided for him in the College at Eton, so that he might be near the Court. Cecil described him as " better lodged than ever he was in England, at liberty to walk and ryde where he will ; " ^ but De Foix himself complained that all his movements were watched. At the end of four months, the .smouldering animosity between him and Provost Day burst into a flame. It seems that strict orders had been given that the gates of the College should be kept closed at night, but that the Frenchmen claimed immunity from all discipline. On the 30th of December, 1563, the Ambassador detained a couple of guests — one of them an Italian — in his room till half-past eight o'clock, and then sent his servant for the keys. The Provost absolutely refused to give them up, and showed himself equally obdurate when the strangers and the Am- bassador's secretary came to him for them, a few minutes later. The interview ended in high words, and the Provost, anxious to avoid another scene, locked his outer door. He ■ Cooper's Athena Catitabrigi- enses, vol. ii. p. 175. " Preface to Ascham's School- master. 3 Wright's Elizabeth and her Times, vol. i. p. 137. August 20, 1563- i68 FRENCH HOSTAGES AT ETON. had barely done so, when it was violently assailed from with- out, and broken open. De Foix and his secretary came in with swords in their hands, and accompanied by their suite ; they dragged the Provost into the outer hall, and threatened to leave him out in the cold till morning. Day, being unarmed, and having only one servant with him, saw that resistance was useless, and yielded up the keys quietly.' The altercation seems to have been carried on in Latin, and some of the Ambassador's insulting words have been recorded : — " Nos non sunius obstricti vestris legibus. Exi ! Tu ipse cubaHs cum eis." Strype thus relates the sequel : — " In the morning the ambassador sent two of his servants unto the Secretary,^ to complain of the Provost, fashion- ing a tale of the Provost's refusal ; with a remembrance, by the way, that they were forced to break open the door. The Secretary answered, that he would send for the Provost, and hear him also ; and if it should appear that he used himself otherwise than became him, he should bear the blame. Which speech of his they liked not ; but said he was partial to the Provost, and suddenly departed. Being scarcely gone from the chamber, they met the Provost coming to the Secretary to complain, as he had cause. And the Frenchmen passing out of the Castle met with two of the Provost's men, whose hearts, as it seems, did rise against them for misusing their master ; and so they fell to some quarrelling, and drawing of their swords. But there was no hurt on either part. Upon this the Frenchmen came back to the Secretary's chamber with another cry ; and finding the Provost with him, who knew nothing of the matter, the Secretary sent for the Knight-Marshal, to examine the matter, and, if he saw cause, to commit the Provost's men to prison ; which though the Marshal found no great cause, yet it was ordered so to be." 3 ' Foreign State PaperSf'E.WishtXii, vol. Ixvii. no. % Sir William Cecil. Strype's Annals, vol. i. part ii. FRENCH HOSTAGES A T ETON. 169 A few days later, the Provost sent in a written account of the disturbance at the Lodge, with a long list of com- plaints against the Ambassador and the members of his retinue. The latter were accused of introducing women of loose character into the College, and of attempting to corrupt the morals of the scholars. The page was said to have played practical jokes by putting stones in the locks of the doors, and the like. " 4, Item, the said page mysused the Fellowes by evill language, as calling them all knaves which some of them hearde and complayned to me therof " 7, Item, wheras their kichen ys under the Usshers chambre, they have sundry tymcs thrust upp spittes in suche places as the hordes be not close joyned, and also dischardged their dagges ' uppon other places of the sayd hordes to the great daunger of those that be above, but which of them did it yt cannot well be knowen, because they that be above cannot see them that be beneth, save that the fyrst of Januarie about three of the clock at afternoone oon of them was seen thrust opp a spitt wherwith hee had almost hitt a litle boy that was in the chambre, and he that did this was in a graye fryse coate or jerkyn, and therby it is thought to be Eustace the boye of the buttrie, for none other in the howse hath at anie tyme worne graye fryse but he only. " 8, Item, they have used to molest the sayd Ussher by immoderate noyse at unseasonable tymes of the night, and this was don by them which lye nigh the Buttrie and Kytchen, and the like noyse hath ben made by them that lye on the other syde towardes the Colledge, wherof complaynt hath ben made to me by the Fellowes of the howse dyverse tymes. pp. 94 — 97. The document from which Strype derived this informa- tion is now missing. His account of the quarrel between Day and Da Foix is evidently based upon the manuscript in the State Papers, though differing from it in a few particulars. ' i.e. pistols. 1 70 FRENCH HOS TA GES AT E TON. " 9, Item, they have broken open a dore that leadeth out of their lodging into the CoUedge leades, where, besydes the shamefull abuse of the place which is not to be rehersed, they have cutt away the leade to shoote in their gonnes. They are to be charged with this that lye in that lodging. " 10, Item, they have and do use daily to kill fesantes, heron-shawes, mallardes, teeles, and doves, with their hand gonnes, of all whiche sortes of fowles I have seen some myself brought into the howse. The principall doers of this are theis — Augustine and the Cooke, besydes other that use commonly to shute, as Sebastian the Butler, his Stuarde, his Chamberlayn, and another that was lately delivered out of prison and committed to him. Everie oon of theis I have seen myself in the fieldes with his piece. "II, Item, the laste of Decembre, the lackye with others whose names I cannot learne, spoyled a great manie of the CoUedge brickes lying on the back side of ther kytchin which they threw at the SchoUers as they passed betwen the Schole and the fieldes. Fyve of the sayd Scholers came to me the same daye to complayn, and brought of the bricks with them which were throwen. " 12, Item, the xxix* of Decembre, Sadocke the goodman of the howse where his horses stand, and some of his servantes lodge, complayned to me that suche of the Frenche men as lodge in his howse used to come to their lodging at unseasonable howers, and that they have broken upp his doers and wyndowes to come in in the night season, whereby oon of the Quenes highnes men that lodged there was in feare both of daunger toward himselfe and also in doubt of losing that he had." Provost Day also complained that the Ambassador openly avowed his intention of retaining, during his whole stay, the furniture and plate which had been lent to him on his arrival at Eton.' If only one half of these charges ' Foreign State Papers, Eliz. vol. Ixvii. no. 2 ECCLESIASTICAL CHANGES. 17 1 were well founded, there was good reason for the removal of the Frenchmen, which was at once ordered by the Secretary of State. The next event of interest in the College history was the destruction of the few remaining objects in the Church that could possibly have been considered superstitious. ■The holy rood had doubtless been taken down soon after the accession of Elizabeth ; but the lofty screen which had supported it was spared until 1569 or 1570. Some idea of the size and grandeur of this structure may be gained from the fact that its demolition at this period occupied twenty-one days of carpenters' work, irrespectively of the time spent in "joyninge the weinscott," and "repairing and washinge the walls where the roodloft stoode, and pavinge the same place with gret stone and bricke." Another entry in the same audit-book records a payment " to Glover and his laborer for two daies brekinge downe Images and fillinge there places with stone and plaister." ' In iconoclastic zeal Provost Day was equalled or surpassed by one of the Fellows — John Wulward — who had narrowly escaped being deprived of his Fellowship at King's for refusing to celebrate the Holy Communion with his face turned towards the East.^ Henceforth the pulpit was more frequently in use than the altar, and a sounding-board was put up over it, to give importance and dignity to the preacher.3 The utterances of the ruling powers in the reign of Elizabeth on the subject of fasting were not quite consistent with one another. A statute enacted in her fifth year im- posed a fine of 3/. on any one who unlawfully ate meat on fish-days, or even on Wednesdays, which were thus added to the existing fast days ; but it guarded itself against being ' Eton Audit Book, 1569— 1570. " Heywood and Wright's Sta- tutes, p. 209. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1578—1579. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 443.) 1/2 OBSERVANCE OF FASTS. supposed to teach that abstinence from flesh was of any necessity for the salvation of the soul of man, and laid great stress on the importance of encouraging the fisheries. A royal proclamation, however, in 1572, associated the religious with the political objects of fasting, styling the eating of meat in Lent "licentious and carnal disorder, in contempt of God and man, and only to the satisfaction of devilish and carnal appetite." A later proclamation protested against any superstitious interpretations of its motives ; while, on the other hand, the unrevoked Homilies continued to describe fasting as " a work profitable to us and accepted of God." ' The orders issued on the subject were nominally of universal obligation, but dispensations were readily granted, or rather sold. The two Universities, and the College of Westminster, were exempted from the Wednesday fast in 1564;= but the College of Eton, so often associated with them in other matters, did not obtain the same privilege until 1577.^ The dispensation issued at this later date did not affect the Lenten fast, and special supplies of ling and haberdine continued to be procured in London year after year.* A dispensation of a very different character had already been granted by Elizabeth, of which it is hardly too much to say that it effected an essential change in the collegiate ' Hallam's Constitutional His- tory, (ed. 1867) vol. i. pp. 397—399 ; Haweis's Sketches of the Refornia- tio7z, pp. 248 — 267. ° Sit.rype.'& Memorials of Parker, vol. i. book ii. ch. 25. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1568 — 1569. " For baskets and lyne to packe parte of our Lenten provysion, and for the Lord Maior his warrant to carve it owt of the Cyttie, 3=-"; Ibid. 1576— 1577. " Mr. Barker his ex- penses at London and Lambeth with the Bisshoppe of Canterburye for Wednsdayes license." " To her Majestie, the bishopp of Canterburye and other officers of the Chauncery the fees for our lycence of Wedns- dayes dyet, 4/. is. 4^rf." " Item geven at Mr. Larks office and pther offices the same tyme for expedi- cion, sj." " Item for Mr. Barker his expenses to get owt the greate seale to be annexed to the Bysshops lycense and other tymes, iis." ■* Eton Audit Books, passim. DISPENSATION TO THE FELLOWS. 173 system of Eton, and that its results may be observed at the present time. The statutes of Henry VI. had made it unlawful for the Fellows to hold any other preferment, and the clause to this effect had been strengthened by an express prohibition of the reception of any dispensations whatever.' It had, therefore, been the custom for every Fellow to vacate his place at Eton on undertaking the cure of souls. Elizabeth, however, was advised to abolish this restriction; and by a letter dated Greenwich, the nth of June, 1566, she gave permission to the Fellows to hold one living apiece of the annual value of 40 marks. The reason assigned for this change was : — " Because we certainly perceive the pryce mete for mayntenance of hospitalitie and lyving is far greter at this daye than ben in former tymes, and that it is not inconvenient for youe to have some cures abrode, where youe maye both teach and informe our subjectes in their duties to God and us." ^ The effect of this dispensation will be seen by comparing the number of Fellows elected in the centuries respectively pre- ceding and succeeding that year. The Registrum Regale gives ninety -seven names between 1466 and 1566, and forty-six between 1566 and 1666. The next century counts for only thirty-seven names. Had the Fellows continued to reside regularly at Eton, and to take some part in the work of education, modern legislation might have taken a very different course. During part of Day's tenure of office at Eton, he had under him as Vice-Provost his own brother-in-law, William Wickham. Sir John Harrington states that, during any occasional absence of the Head-Master, it was usual for the Vice-Provost to undertake the management of the School. It was thus that Harrington fell under the jurisdiction of • Statute XXV. | ' Sloane MS. 4844, f. 196. 174 FELLOWS AND HEAD-MASTERS. Wickham, who showed towards him " as fatherly a care as if he had been a second tutor " to him.' WiUiam Wickham became successively Dean and Bishop of Lincoln, and Bishop of Winchester, and he is remembered as the preacher of the sermon at the funeral of Mary Queen of Scots, at Peter- borough, in 1587. The epitaph of Thomas Smith, one of the Fellows at this period, deserves to be quoted as an example of the kind of versification which was then tolerated at a seat of learning : — "Anno 1572. August 18 daye. Under this stone lieth Thomas Smith, late a Fellow heare. And of Cambridge Mr. of Arts of the King's Colledge theare. He did departe from earthlie life the tyme above exprest. Whose soule we hope dothe now remain in Abrams brest." Ten years later, another Fellow, Matthew Page, bequeathed 40/. for the purchase of fifteen coverlets "of good and faier tapestrie to laie uppon the bedds of the Schollars Collegiate." He desired that on each of them should be worked the Arms of Henry VI. and of Elizabeth, with the following couplet : — " Qui Leo dejuda est, etflos de Jesse, leones Protegat et flores, Elizabetha, ticos." and also the Arms of Eton and King's Colleges, and a few Latin words recording the name of the donor.^ Several of the Head-Masters successively appointed by Provost Day were laymen. Reuben Sherwood, the first, afterwards became a physician at Bath.3 Thomas Ridley turned his attention to the law, was made a Master in Chan- cery, and received knighthood at the hands of James I.-* His ' Nugce Antiqtice, (ed. 1779) vol. i. p. 74. " Will of Matthew Page, June 15, 1582, in Eton Register, vol. iv f. 4. The Audit Book, 1 581 — 1582, re- cords a payment " To Keene the glasier for drawinge the armes that are to be sett in the coverletts given by Doctor Byll and Mr. Page, i8.y." 3 Cooper's Athenm Cantabrigi- enses, vol. ii. p. 271. '' Yoa^i Judges of England, vol. vi. p. 8. ROVAL VISITS. 175 successor at Eton, John Hammond, was a physician, and had among his patients some influential person at Court who procured for him a letter from the Queen, ordering the College to grant him a favourable lease.' Sherwood and Ridley were, like Malim, Kingsmen, and also less than thirty years of age at the time of their respective appointments to the office of Head-Master. We may here notice that the scholarship and discipline of Eton must have enjoyed a good reputation in the sixteenth century, as no less than five out of the first eight Masters of St. Paul's School were Kingsmen.'' Queen Elizabeth paid several visits to Eton, which are not recorded in the histories of her life ; ^ and the College was also honoured by the presence of the Lord Keeper, Sir ' Eton Lease Book, f. 20. " Knight's Life of Colet. Their names were Rightwise, Cook, Malim, Harrison, and Mulcaster. The first of these was the com- poser of the Propria qua maribus, and As in prasenti, which, for more than three centuries, as- sisted school-boys in their diffi- culties about Latin genders, and irregular verbs. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1569 — 1570. " To Philip Wilde for makinge the two waies for the quenes majestie to pass throweBrockess, lid.'''; Ibid. 1588—1589. " To Thomas Keyne the glasier for worke done in Mr. Provostes lodginge against the comynge of the Ouene, ut per biUam, ()s. 6d." ; " Item to William Russell for one dayes worke to pull downe the porche at the Schole doore against the Quene's com- mynge, I2d." ; " Item to Mr. Daye for 53 els of canvas for the Gentle- men and Children to make table clothes against the commyng of the Quene, ui per billam, 495'." ; Ibid. 1589 — 1590. " To Holdernes for 3 dayes dressinge of the playing-filde by the. garden when the Quene came, lid." "Making railes at Shawe and digging holes for them at the Quenes commynge,8^."; Ibid. 1 59 1— 1592. "To Goodman Bell for 12 loads of sand when the Quene came, 4.S-. Item to George Flame 3 dayes dygging the sande, 3^-. Item to Rolfe 2 dayes and a halfe carry- ing of sande to the Seller and other places when the Quene was here, 2od. Item to Rolfe for 3 dayes rydding awaye rubbishe in the kytchen yearde, clensing the garden diche and spredding -sande, 2s. Item to James and Loveroye for sweeping the hall, galleries, cloys- ters, and other busynes when the Quene was here, 3 dayes, 4J. Item to Skydmore and Biddle 3 dayes taking downe and setting up things in the chambers when the Quene was here, 6s.'' 1/6 PA YMENTS B Y THE COLLEGE. Nicholas Bacon, in 1578,' and of the Duke of Wurtemburg, in August 1592.^ During some years, at least, of the reign of Elizabeth, Eton College rented a portion of a house in London from the sister College at Cambridge.3 The site of the house is not specified, but it was probably in the Ward of Baynard's Castle, where King's College holds property still called " Gardrobe Duke Humphrey," after the famous Duke of Gloucester/ The audit-books show that the Provost and Fellows were in the habit of making grants of money for extraneous purposes. Thus in the year of the great Northern Rebellion, they evinced their loyalty by providing a steel saddle and the armour requisite for a light horseman ; s they also contributed towards establishing a preacher at Ripon, and towards the ransom of a Greek Archbishop.^ Another entry records the journey of one of the Fellows " to London, to laye wayte amonge -the goldesrnithes for the College plate that was stolne." ' William Day held the Deanery of Windsor together with the Provostship of Eton for several years, but he had to resign both these offices on being elevated to the see of Winchester in 1595.^ One of his last acts at Eton was to despatch a letter to the Bishop of Lincoln informing him that the electors had been unable to agree upon a new Fellow to take the place ' Eton Audit Book, 1577—1578. " To Ralford for 2 loades of gravell againste the Lord Keeper's comynge, Zd." ' Rye's England as seen by Foreigners,^. 17. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1576 — 1577. " Paide by the handes of Mr. Bust Vicepreposit the rent due to the Kings Colledge of Cambridge for the lodging in their howse in Lon- don due for one half yeare endinge at Michaelmas 1 577, 46;-. 8,^. Item paide to Mr. Bust towardes his charge rydinge to Cambridge abowt that business, iZs. 6>d." ♦ Ecclesiologist, vol. xx. pp. 306 — 307- 5 Eton Audit Book, 1569 — 1570. ^ Ibid. 1589— 1590. "Geven to- wardes the new erecting of the CoUedg at Rippon for the mainten- aunce of a preacher for the same Towne, 3/. 6^. M." "Geven to Partholomeus Archbusshopp of Larissa taken with the Turkes, \os." 1 Ibid. 1587—1588. ^ Le Neve's Fasti. WILLIAM WHITAKER. 177 of William Whitaker, lately deceased. The Bishop exercised the right of nomination which thus lapsed to him, in favour of a certain Thomas Key/ The Registrum Regale gives no biographical note to William Whitaker, but a comparison of dates proves that he was identical with the eminent Master of St. John's College of that name.^ We may, therefore, reckon among the Fellows of Eton one of the most learned theologians of the age of Elizabeth. ' Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 17. * William Whitaker of St. John's College died on the 4th of Decem- ber, 159s ; and the letter to the Bishop of Lincoln is dated the 5th' of January, 1596, which was the firit day after the expiration of the month during which the right of election was vested in the Provost and Fellows by the 9th Statute. official Seal of the Provost. 1595—1623. Election of Henry Savile— The Eton Library— Distinguished Visitors —Lady Savile — The Eton Press— St. Chrysostom — John Chamber, Adam Robyns, William Charke, and Richard Mountague— The Com- mensals — Philip Lytton — Dismissal of a Head-Master — Death of Sir Henry Savile— Provost Murray. N the elevation of Dr. Day to the see of Win- chester, Secretary Cecil took care that the Fellows of Eton should have no excuse for ignoring the claims of the royal prerogative, and accordingly ordered them to suspend the election of a new Provost until the Queen's pleasure should be known. He justified this prohibition on two grounds — partly on the general right of the Crown to present to every benefice rendered vacant by the incumbent's acceptance of a bishopric, and partly on the particular right of nomination which the Queen and her predecessors had ever exercised in regard to the Provostship of Eton.' The Fellows sent an obsequious answer,^ and so the matter rested for several months. The first, and, for aught that is known, the only candidate of high position, was Henry Savile, Warden of Merton College, ' Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 17. " Ashtnokan MS. 1537, f. 117. HENR Y SA VILE. 179 Oxford, but he was not considered unexceptionable, and Elizabeth seems to have appointed him " to be the Secretary of the Latin tongue, and to hold the Deanery of Carlisle in co7nmendam, in order to stop his mouth from importuning her any more." " Backed, however, by the powerful influence of the Earl of Essex, he eventually obtained a definite promise of the Provostship, although everybody was well aware that, as a layman, he was technically unqualified. The claims of the royal prerogative were pushed to an extreme point in the mandamus, which declared that it was merely " for the respect and honor " that the Queen bore to her "noble progenitors, founders" of the College, that she allowed the Fellows to go through even the form of an election, the place being in her " sole and absolute gifte " in consequence of Day's promotion.'' The Queen's nominee was accordingly elected on the 26th of May, 1596.3 Savile has been styled " the most learned Englishman in profane literature of the reign of Elizabeth," "■ and old writers have called him a " lay-bishop " in consideration of his great theological knowledge.^ After completing a severe course of study at Oxford, he had travelled on the Continent for some time, and on his return he assisted Elizabeth in the study of Greek and mathematics. In 1586, he was ap- pointed Warden of Merton College, and he continued to hold that post together with the Provostship of Eton, up to the day of his death. "Thus this skilfull gardiner had at the same time a nurcery of young plants and an orchard of grown trees, both flourishing under his careful inspection." ^ Savile's first act as Provost of Eton was to institute legal proceedings, on behalf of the College, against his predecessor. " Birch's Memoirs of Elizabeth, vol. i. p. 441. " Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 18. 3 Ibid. •■ Hallam's Literature of Europe, (ed. 1854.) vol. i. p. 520. 5 Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Men ; Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, (ed. 1732) lib. viii.p. 48. ^ Fuller's Worthies — Yorkshire. N 2 I So THE LIBRARY. for the recovery of the sum of lOO/., and a silver ewer valued at 30/. Bishop Day himself died very soon after his promotion, but his executor refunded the money in instalments spead over four years.' Savile next turned his attention to the College Library, which of late had been sadly neglected. The building was in a ruinous condition, and the shelves had received few additions since the " cleansing " in the reign of Edward VI. A carpenter was therefore despatched to Oxford " to view the liberary there," lately founded by Sir Thomas Bodley ; ^ and new presses were ordered. Three incidental entries in the audit-books enable us to fix on what has since been called ' Lower Master's Chamber' as the site of the Eton Library at this period.3 Before the repairs in it were quite finished, Savile had persuaded the Fellows of the desirability of increasing the collection of books. Year after year the College accounts record large payments for the purchase of books and for binding. The London dealers were eager to secure such excellent customers, and used to tempt them to further outlay by allowing them a discount of twenty per cent* The Queen honoured Eton with at least two visits during Savile's time, the first of which is commemorated by an in- scription rudely carved on the wainscot near the north-eastern corner of the Hall : — Queen Elizabetha ad nos gave October x 2 LOVES IN A Mes 1S96. ' Eton Audit Books, 1596— 1600. The counsel employed by the Col- lege was Savile's brother, afterwards a judge. ^ Ibid. 1596—1597. The man is styled " John Joyner," the surnames of some members of the lower classes being still descriptive of their occupations, rather than hereditary. 3 Eton Audit Books, 1598 — 1599, 1611— 1612, 1678 -1679. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 454.) "" Ibid, passim. There are lists of the books then purchased. ROYAL VISITS. i8i Her last visit was seemingly in August or September, 1601.' In February of that year, Savile had the misfortune to lose her favour in consequence of his intimate connexion with the Earl of Essex. When that ill-starred nobleman was com- mitted to trial for high-treason, Savile was also arrested. Thus the first two lay Provosts of Eton, Smith and Savile, were made to suffer for the faults of their respective patrons. Savile, however, did not fare badly, for he was detained in private custody for a short time only.'' Soon after his release, the Due de Biron, the French Ambassador, came to Eton with a great retinue, and was received with the honour due to his position. John Wilson, who, " though the smallest boy in the school, had been made a Praepostor,'' addressed him in a Latin speech, and received a present of three angels for his pains. 3 As he was not elected a Scholar of King's College, Cambridge, until 1604, he must have been young at the time, as well as small of stature. The audit-book records the receipt of " a buck at my Lorde Embassador's dyning in the College Hall." * James I. came to Windsor twice in the summer of 1603, to inspect the royal residence, but he seems to have disap- pointed the Etonians by postponing his intended visit to the College.5 Savile was known to the King by reputation at least, and soon received flattering offers of preferment, but he declined everything except the honour of knighthood. Book, 1602 — 1603, about "making a range in the Colledge kytchen for the Embassador " seems to refer to some other envoy. 5 Nichols's Progresses of James I., vol. i. pp. 167, 193, 203 ; Eton Audit Book, 1602— 1603. " For russhes for the Schole (expecting the Kinge), i8rf." "Item to Matthevi'e Bell for 6 loads of sand and for 2 loads of gravill expecting the Kinge, 8^." " Eton Audit Book, 1600— 1601. " To Mathewe Bell for 4 loads of sand \s. and 2 loads of gravill IS. and horse and carte to make awaye by the shooting fild at the Quenes being here dd. — i>s. 6d." ; Nichols's Progresses of Elizabeth, vol. iii. pp. 564 — 567. " Chamberlain's Letters ( Camden Society), p. 106 Feb. 24, 1600 ' Rawlinson MS. B. 266, f 3. •* An entry m the Eton Audit 1 82 S/Ji HENR y SA VILE. Sir Thomas Edmunds wrote to Winwood on the 30th of September, 1604: — " At the time of the King's late being at Windsor, he was drawn by Mr. Peter Young to see Eaton Colledge, and after a bankquett there made him, he knighted Mr. Savill. The gentlewoman your friend saith that the favour cometh now too late, and therefore now not worthy of her." ' Lady Savile was indeed of a querulous disposition, and used to grudge the time which her husband devoted to his literary studies. On one occasion she said : — " Sir Henry, I would I were a book too, and then you would a little more respect me ; " to which a bystander replied : — " You must then be an almanack. Madam, that he might change every year." When Savile was suffering from overwork at his edition of St. John Chrysostom, she threatened to burn the great Father for killing her husband.^ Savile, too, is described as a man of jealous and austere temper. " He would faine have been thought to have been as great a scholar as Joseph Scaliger," 3 and he assumed a patronising air towards professional men of letters who could not boast his gentle birth and commanding presence. He was displeased when praise was freely bestowed on other scholars. Casaubon says : — " It is his custom to kick all men who are generally considered learned, and to treat them as asses on two legs."* At Merton College he was concerned in at least one serious dispute, for we read that he " got a great victorie of his Fellowes, and raunsommed and punished divers of them, and amongst the rest expelled Mr. Colmer, who of griefe or curst hart, died within five dayes after." s At Eton, Savile was unpopular with the Kingsmen on account of his ' Winwood's Memorials, vol. ii. P- 33- ■" Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, (ed. 1732) lib. viii. p. 49. 2 Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Meti. ^ Epistolce, (ed. 1709) p. 461. 5 Chamberlain's Letters (Cam- den Society), p. 27. November 8, 1598. S/Ji HENR Y SA VILE. 1 83 constant promotion of aliens, and with the boys on account of his severity. He had a rooted distrust of clever youths who relied on their natural talents. " Give me the plodding student," he would say, " if I would look for wits, I would go to Newgate ; there be the wits." ' Sir Henry Savile lost his only son about 1601, and thence- forth resolved to devote his fortune, as well as his time, to the promotion of literature and science. With this object he founded and endowed the Professorships of Geometry and Astronomy at Oxford, which still bear his name, and which have respectively been held by Wren and Halley. Savile's European reputation, however, rests upon his own works. His treatise on Roman warfare was thought worthy of being translated into German long after his death ; ^ while a collection of old English historians made by him in 1596 has until lately proved very useful to students in our own country. He was also engaged on the revision of the English Bible. Yet any labour bestowed on these pro- ductions was light in comparison with that of preparing the magnificent edition of the works of St. John Chrysostom, with which Savile's name must ever be associated. No sys- tematic attempt had yet been made towards bringing together the numerous writings of this great Father of the Church, and many of them were almost unknown. Savile had himself purchased many valuable MSS. in the course of his travels, but they proved insufficient for his purpose, and he had to send agents to almost every part of Europe to make collations. James I. took so warm an interest in the matter that he instructed his ambassadors abroad to procure every facility for Savile's copyists. Among the foreign scholars who rendered assistance may be noticed the names of De Thou, Casaubon, Le Due, Gruter, Hoeschel, and ■ Wood's Athena Oxonienses, I ' Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. ii. p. 316. I (ed. 1854) vol. i, pp. 520, 528. 1 84 SA VILE'S CHR YSOS TOM. Gabriel, Archbishop of Philadelphia.' The difficulties of the undertaking did not end with the correction of the numerous errors which had crept into the text, for there was a great scarcity of Greek type, and of skilled printers, in England. Savile was obliged to procure a fount of type from abroad, which received the name of the "silver letter," in contra- distinction to " diamond," " paragon," and other technical names.'' He secured the services of the King's printer, John Chimneys facing tiie Slough Road. Norton, whom Casaubon styles " by far the richest man of his profession, and a man of good abilities ; " 3 but he resolved to have the printing done under his own eye, at Eton. A range of buildings had been erected on the western side of the Stable Yard between the years 1603 and 1606 ; and, in that portion of it which, since the time of Dr. Hawtrey, has formed the residence of the Head-Master, Savile caused the ' Beloe's Anecdotes of Literature, vol. V. pp. 103—135. ■^ Harleian MS. 5910. 3 Epistola, p. 509. THE ETON PRESS. i8s press to be set up. The other new rooms were used as granaries, as studies, and as dormitories for the Clerks and Commensals, the latter renting theirs from the Head- Master.' The first productions of the Eton press were some small Greek books, the printing of which prepared Norton for the more serious work which lay before him. A collection of Iambic verses by John, Metropolitan of Euchaitis, is dated 1610, and several Orations of St. Gregory Nazianzen seem to have been published in that year. The former was edited by Matthew Bust, the latter by Richard Mountague, two promising young Kingsmen whom Savile had engaged to assist him. The edition of St. Chrysostom was three years in the press, and extended to eight volumes folio, which were issued from time to time. Casaubon speaks of the work as proceeding " at private cost but with royal spirit," " and Fuller describes it as " a burden which he [Savile] underwent with- out stooping under it, though the weight thereof would have broken the back of an ordinary person." 3 The subscribers received with the last volume in 161 3 a preface to the entire book, and eight prints from an elaborate copper-plate, for insertion in place of the uninteresting title-pages originally prefixed to the other volumes. The new title-page bears figures of the four great Fathers of the Holy Eastern Church, Savile's Arms, and those of various colleges at the two Universities, and small views of King's College and Eton College.^ Fuller says that one of the printers had been bribed to send over the sheets one by one to Paris, where the work " Eton Audit Book, 1608—1609. " New lockes for the dores in the new buildinge where the printers worke." In other Audit Books the new buildirig is described as "by the Stable Yard," and mention is made of " posts at the new building in the high way," and of a " great window next the high way where the corne is taken up." ' Epistolcs, p. 430. 3 Wo7'thies — Yorkshire. * Compare the copies of the work in the British Museum. 1 86 SA VILE'S CHR YSOS TOM. was reproduced verbatim by Fronton le Due, who only added a Latin translation. "Thus two editions of Saint Chrysostome did together run a race in the world, which should get the speede of the other in publique sale and acceptance. Sir Henry his edition started first by the advantage of some months. But the Parisian edition came up close to it, and advan- taged with the Latine translation (though dearer of price) out-stript it in quickness of sale, but of late the Savilian Chrysostome hath much mended its pace." It seems clear, however, that the Eton edition had the start by two years, and as Le Due was one of the scholars to whom Savile gave thanks for assistance rendered, the truth of Fuller's story is extremely doubtful.' Be this as it may, we know that the "worthy English knight, who set forth the £^oMen-mouthed Father, in a silver print," impoverished him- self while enriching the world of literature.'' The work is said to have cost no less than 8000/., and it brought the editor more honour than money. The Elector Palatine gave him a handsome present of plate ; ^ the United Provinces gave him a chain worth 40/. ; * and the Venetian Republic caused a medal to be engraved with his name ; ^ but the work sold very slowly. A thousand copies were originally offered to the public at 9/. apiece, but in 161 3 they were being sold at 8/.^ The price was afterwards lowered considerably, and, after Savile's death, some copies, given or bequeathed by him to Eton College, were disposed of at a third of the original price.7 ' Brunei's Manuel du Libraire, under ' Johannes.' " Fuller's Holy State, (ed. 1648) p. 186. "* Domestic State Papers, ]axae%\. vol. Ixxii. no. 74. * Ibid. vol. Ixxvi. no. 27. 5 Ibid. vol. Ixxii. no. 12 r, and vol. Ixxvii. no. "JJ. * Domestic State Papers,]3.m.ti\, vol. Ixxii. no. 57. ' Eton Audit Book, 1623 — 1624. " Received of Mr. Vice-Provost for ij coppies of Chrissostom's sould by him at iij'- the coppie, vj'- " ; Ibid. 1628— 1629. " Of Mr. Nightingall of Winsore for a copy of Chrysos- tom's works, iij'-" THE ETON PRESS. 187 Sir Henry Savile at one time contemplated publishing a complete collection of the works of St. Gregory Nazianzen, but he laid this scheme aside, on the appearance of Morel's edition in 1609. Richard Mountague was also to have edited the works of St. Basil the Great ; but no Greek books issued from the Eton press after the Chrysostom, except the Periegesis of Dionysius, the Cyropcedia of Xenophon, and a Christmas Oration of St. Gregory Nazianzen. Of these the first was intended for use in the School, and perhaps we ought to assign the same destination to the other two also. After Sir Henry Savile's death, his Greek type was acquired by the University of Oxford, and lent by it to the sister University.' The Vice-Provost during a great part of Savile's time was Baldwin Collins, a man " of such charity that it passeth belief: giving the poor the cloaths from off his back, and his hat from off his head." He refused many offers of prefer- ment, saying : — " I have enough, I have enough," and he used gratuitously to assist the clergy in the neighbourhood of Eton by preaching in their churches. It is also recorded to his credit that " he did freely prefer many poor but good scholars " under his charge." The Fellowship vacated by his death in 1 61 6 was given to his son Daniel, and was held between the two for no less than seventy- seven years. 3 Another Fellow who had taken part in the election of Savile was John Chamber, the author of some works in favour of astronomy, as distinguished from astrology,'* but better remembered as the founder of two scholarships at Merton College for Postmasters {Portionistm) to be chosen from among the boys at Eton who were superannuated for admission to King's. They are worth 65/. per annum, besides * Fourth Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, p. 464. = Cole's MS. vol. xiv. f. 125. ' Eton Register, vol. iii. *• Wood's Athena Oxonienses, KoX. ii. pp. 744 — 746. 1 88 ADAM ROBYNS. rooms and a portion of commons, and are in the gift of the Provosts of Eton and King's respectively. Another benefactor at this period was Adam Robyns, a Fellow, who left lOo/. for the purchase of a silver ewer and dish, and of tapestry -for the Hall. Robyns died in 1613 ; and little time was lost in carrying out the provisions of his will. silver Ewer and Dish bought in 1613. A silver ewer and dish, double gilt, were sent down to Eton on approval by a certain William Terry, goldsmith of Lombard Street, and being definitely chosen they were sent back to London to have the Eton Arms engraved and enamelled on them, and to have cases fitted to them.' They are the earliest and most beautiful specimens of plate now in ' Eton Audit Books, 1612 — 1614. The entries about this plate and tapestry are too long to be in- serted here verbatim. The hall- mark on the former is London, 1610 — 161 1. WILLIAM CHARKE. 189 the possession of the College, and they occupy a prominent position on the side-board in the Hall on the 4th of June, on Founder's Day, and on other festive occasions. Some arras purchased with the balance of Robyns's bequest, from Edmund Travers, citizen and haberdasher of London, used annually to be hung at the west end of the Hall above the dais, at election -tide, until 1858. The subjects embroidered on it were the Flight into Egypt, and Christ among the Doctors. This tapestry was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1875." The Fellow who was entrusted with the choice of the plate and tapestry was a certain William Charke, who gave a good deal of trouble in his day by a persistent opposition to everything which, in his opinion, in any way savoured of Romanism. In 1572, he had scandalised the University of Cambridge by maintaining in a Latin sermon that "the offices of bishop, archbishop, metropolitan, patriarch, and pope, were introduced into the Church by Satan." When summoned before the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Houses, he absolutely refused to retract or qualify this very sweeping proposition, and he was therefore expelled from the Uni- versity, according to the statutes.^ An appeal to Lord Burghley had no effect at the time, but it may have been through his influence that Charke obtained a Fellowship at Eton in 1599. He cannot have modified his views, for on the 5th of December, 1610, we find Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, writing to Sir Henry Savile : — " I promised you to see Eaton beefore the end of this session of Parlament, and purposed it beefore Christmas ; but the adjournaments of our meeting are so frequent and uncertein, that I can not pick out a sett time for that journey ; which for your owne and your Chrysostom's sake ' RaddySe's Memoria/s 0/ JEion ; \ bridge Transactions during the Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 452. Puritan Period, \o\. i. pp. 123— ' Heywood and Wright's Cam- I 133. igo LEARNED FELLOWS. I would very gladly speede. Yet I confesse truly unto you, I am the more loth as yet to come, because there are some thinges there complayned of to mee, which you by your wisdome may reforme beefore my coming. Mr. Chark his exorbitant unconformitee, both to the Church Canons and the College Statutes (to which -either he ia or must bee sworne) is much repined at, and I am blamed for suffring it. Advise him presently to conforme himself fully to both, or els I must not come (which I rather would) as a frend to see you, but as a visitor to censure him'.' ' The Bishop wrote again four days later, telling Savile that Charke had called on him, and excuseid himself by saying that he had not been summoned to conform by the Provost and Fellows. " Hee putts his Perjury upon your connivence."^ Savile certainly had no sympathy with Puritanism, and probably took Charke to task after this warning, for the latter continued to hold his Fellowship until 1617.3 The Fellows who were elected through Savile's own influ- ence were men of a very different stamp. He fully realised that Henry VI. had intended his noble foundation to be something more than a mere grammar-school, and he did his best to make the College one of the most learned societies in Europe. Thomas Allen, who was elected to succeed John Chamber in 1604, wrote some of the notes to the edition of Chrysostom, and stood high in the Provost's estimation. He was tutor to Henry Hammond, who, while at Eton, " loved to steal away Far from loud boyish sports, in solitude to pray." * Thomas Savile, a younger brother of the Provost, who had travelled in many countries, and was an intimate friend and correspondent of William Camden, was admitted Fellow in ' Lambeth MS. vol. dclxiii. f. 13- = Ibid. f. 14. 3 Eton Register, vol. iii. ■• Eton Bureau, p. 97. RICHARD MOUNTAGUE. 191 161 3.' The same year witnessed the election of Richard Mountague, and of the " ever-memorable " John Hales, whom we shall have occasion to mention afesome length in the next chapter. Mountague has already been noticed in connexion with the Greek press at Eton, and indeed he is said to have revised the proof-sheets of the Chrysostom. Laud describes him as " a very good scholar, and a right honest man, a man every way able to do God, his Majesty, and the Church of England great service." James I. — no mean judge — con- sidered him competent to enter the lists against such formid- able opponents as Cardinal Baronius and John Selden, at different times. The last years of Mountague's life were spent in what he describes as the effort " to stand in the gapp against Puritanisme and Popery, the Scilla and Charybdis of antient piety." " No sooner had he parried a thrust on the one side than he had to defend himself on the other. A sermon preached by him, as Canon of Windsor, before the King, in 1621, aroused the suspicions of the Puritan party, who accused him of supporting the Invocation of Saints. His vindication of the sermon showed that he was not to be daunted by threats, and he wrote to his friend Cosin : — "Me temerarium, that provokes enimyes on all sides, Puritans, Papists, la^vyers, hell and all. ' Dulychii Samiique et quos tulit alta Zacynthus, turba ruunt in me! " So you heare, so you say .... I am redy not only to be bound, but avv @6o3 to dye, for the Church .... I shall never faile the Church of England but usque ad aras do my best to uphold the doctrine and discipline ther." 3 Three years later, Mountague fell into controversy with the Romanists in consequence of his having found some of their ■ Belo^s Anecdotes of Literature, I Society), vol. i. p. 21. vol. V. pp. 112 — 114. 3 /^/^. pp. 9— JO. ' Cosin' s Correspondence (Surtees | 192 RICHARD MOUNTACUE. emissaries attempting to make proselytes in his country parish. Fuller says of him, that " his great parts were attended with a tartness of writing ; very sharp the nib of his pen, and much gall mingled in his ink, against such as opposed him. However, such the equability of the sharpness of his style, he was impartial therein ; be he ancient or modern writer, papist or protestant, that stood in his way, they should all equally taste thereof" " In speaking of the Roman Gag for the New Gospell, Mountague says, " answere it I have .... bitterly and tartly I confesse, which I did purposely, because the asse deserved so to be rub'd." " It so happened, however, that his mode of conducting the controversy infuriated the Puritans even more than his Romanist antagonists, as he surrendered, without a blow, many positions which had hitherto been warmly contested. Like the earlier English Reformers, he appealed to Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Primitive Church and General Councils, but he did so with a wider knowledge of patristic theology than any of them had possessed. He refused to brand the Pope as Antichrist ; he defended the use of the sign of the Cross, of images, and of auricular confession ; and he maintained high views as to the efficacy of the Sacraments. The first Parlia- ment of Charles I. took upon itself to censure a book by him, entitled " Appello Ccesarem" and bound him to find security for his appearance, in the large sum of 2,000/. On the other hand, the commitee of bishops, to whom some of his works were refer- red, declared that he had " not affirmed anything to be the doctrine of the Church of England, but that which, in our opinion, is the doctrine of the Church of England, or agree- able thereunto." 3 Mountague was protected from his enemies by the influence of the King, and by the dissolution of Parlia- ment. His utter repudiation of Calvinism would, at one time, have got him into trouble at Court, but, such is the irony of ' Church History, Book xi. c. 7. I p. 33. ' Cosin's Correspondence, vol. i. I ^ Harleian MS. 7000. PROSPEROUS TIMES. 193 fate, he was appointed Bishop of Chichester in 1628, on the death of Carleton, who had been the representative of James I. at the Synod of Dort. This was four years after his resignation of the Eton Fellowship.' Sir Henry Savile did not live long enough to carry out his intention of securing a Fellowship for John Boys, one of his fellow-labourers in the translation of the Bible, and in the edition of St. Chrysostom. All that Boys received for his pains in the latter was a copy of the work.= Savile per- suaded the College to grant 5/. to another of his assistants, " Mr. Andrewe Downes, Professor of the Greeke tounge in Cambridge," 3 and 3/. 6s. 8d. " to Chrysanthus, Bishopp of Lacedsemonia, in Greece," who may have been attracted to Eton by the fame of the scholars there. The Fellows had less sympathy with a " Spanish gent voluntarily exiling him- selfe for the Gospell (as he said)," and gave him only lOi-. The revenue was then in a flourishing condition, and, in 1610, Eton College was able to make a loan of 300/. to Merton College. But here we must notice the beginning of the system of dividing up the annual surplus between the principal members of the College. In 161 7, the distribution under this head amounted to more than 400/. + The School, too, was in high repute. Casaubon, who was the guest of Sir Henry Savile on several occasions, secured a place on the foundation for his son Meric in i6io.s At the election of 161 3, there were more than a hundred candidates for admission,* and the Provost was importuned on all sides by anxious parents. Two years later, we hear of a payment " to Thomas Wright, joyner, for a little table to lanthen the Commensalls' table in the Hall, their number being gretter ' Biographia Britannica; Lazed' s Works. ' Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, (ed. 1732) lib. viii. p. 49. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1611— 1612. * Ibid. 1609 — 16 10. 5 Patti son's Isaac Casaubon, pp. 389, 397, 41 9j 436; Beloe. ^ Domestic State Papers, James I. vol. Ixxiv. no. 33. 194 THE COMMENSALS. than before could sett at it." ' There were then about twenty- eight of these independent students at the second table, and about half that number at the third, although the charges for their board had been nearly trebled in the course of sixty years. In 1613, the Commensals at the third table had to pay is. 6d. a week, and those at the second table as much as 5 J. 6d. Young Lord Wriothesley (afterwards created Earl of Chichester) lived more luxuriously, and kept a page to wait on him.= Their board cost about lu. a week, and the total expense of a Commensal's education in the reign of James I. appears greater than that of an Oppidan in the reign of Victoria, when we allow for the change in the purchasing- power of money. Con O'Neil, son of the ' Arch-Rebel,' the Earl of Tyrone, was at Eton in 161 6 and 1617, with two or more servants ; and the Head-Master's bills, which were paid by the Government, came to about 90/. a year.3 A Latin Grammar cost i2d., selections by Sturmius from the Epistles of Cicero, ^d., and • a Bible as much as 6^. St/.'t Among the Commensals at the second table was Philip Lytton, a younger son of Sir Rowland Lytton, of Knebworth. In a letter written on the 29th of December, 1608, in the Christmas holidays, Dudley Carleton says : — " Phil Litton is well, and in commons in the hall, though all his camarades be dispersed. His schoolemaster made a complaint unto me that he was too daintie mouthed and could eat no beefe, but he answeares the matter well. ' Verum est. When I was at Mr. Aldcn's . I had better meat.' " = The Mr. Alden mentioned was evidently Mordecai Aldem, one of the Fellows. It was the custom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the Provost and Fellows to have ' Eton Audit Book, 1614 — 1615. ° Ibid. 1 61 2 — 1620. 3 Devon's Issues of the Ex- chequer, pp. 184, 189, 210. '' Third Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 265. 5 Domestic State Papers, James I. vol. xxxviii. no. 67. RICHARD LANGLEY. 195 one or two boys lodging in their houses.' A year later Carleton was able to send a better account of young Lytton : — " I have delivered 5/. to Dr. Langlie for Phill Litton, whereof i/. 15^. 'jd. goeth to discharge the last quarter, the rest remaines in hand against the next payment. Some bookes he desires which I have wisht him to write for to his father, and it will give him goode encoragement yf he be allowed them. He hath stept a forme higher at this Christmas remove, and is now under the Schoolemaster's tuition, who gives him" his goode word for his goode proceeding tarn doctrina quain moribus." " This Dr. Langley was a pluralist, and, as such, the cause of much anxiety to the Visitor of the College. In the same letter in which he complained to Sir Henry Savile about Charke's nonconformity. Bishop Barlow says : — " I will not, neither must I, winke at such palpable Nonresidence, so wilfuU and so offensive as I understand your Schoolemaster is guilty of; who having two rich benefices (as I am informed) farr distant from his Schoole, and beeing a Doctor of Divinity, continueth the teaching of children, and neglecteth his principall charge which are the soules of his people. This I tell you is an apostemated ulcer, and breaketh out by the mouthes of those that love not the Church, to the scandall of our profession, to your blame and my reproofe who heare of it oftner then I would, and in places where I would wish it were silenced." ^ The Provost's answer to this letter is missing, but it is clear that he pleaded Langley's industry and aptitude for teaching, as a reason for retaining him at Eton. The Bishop retorted ' The Inventories at Eton men- tion beds for scholars in the houses of the various Fellows. ' Domestic State Papers, James I. vol. lii. no. 9. 3 Lambeth MS. vol. dclxiii. f. 13- O 2 196 RICHARD LANGLEY. that the tenure of the office of Head-Master by a Doctor of Divinity was forbidden in the statutes of Henry VI., by imph'cation, if not in express terms : — " Faciam vos piscatores hominum, did so farr sway with that devoute Founder's rehgious minde, that hee little thought any man would have been either so covetous for wealth or so stooping in conceite, as from an Interpreter of the Holy Ghost, to become an expositor of profane Poets." ' Soon after this Sir Henry Savile fell ill, but on his recovery, in July 161 1, the Bishop returned to the charge, saying that it was a disgrace to a Doctor of Divinity to be " hired and removeable." Since the King and the Archbishop had resolved "to call men to their local and personal residence upon their benefices," Langley's irregularity could no longer be ignored : — " Is not this the sparing of Agag because he was a comely person ? . . His churches have neede of him, send him to his charge ; his vertues for example, his sufficiency for learn- ing, can not bee too greate nor too good for God's people." ^ As the Bishop ended his letter with a threat of a formal visitation, Sir Henry Savile lost no time in sending Dr. Langley to argue his own case.s The Bishop, however, was inexorable, and after the interview, wrote to say that the cause of scandal must absolutely be removed : — " I do assure you, if ther be a Parlament, we shall not be able to justify his stay either with your credit or mine, besides our duty to God and the King ; if from thence he should be preferred to the best Deanery in England, I should well like it, for I affect the man as much as you ; but in this case I am not able to yield his desire. Id pcssuinus, quod jure possuinus, is a sound rule in law."* ' Lambeth MS. vol. dclxiii. f. 14. Dec. 9, 1610. ^ Ibid. f. 17. July 16, 161 1. 3 Ibid. f. 21. •I Ibid. f. 22. August 161 1. CHOICE OF MASTERS. 197 Dr. Langley was accordingly summoned to appear before the Provost and Fellows, and, as he still refused to resign his place, he received formal notice that his services Would not be required after the following Lady Day.' The position of a Head-Master under sentence of dismissal is not pleasant, as Langley must have found, for he soon declared his willing- ness to go at once.'' He seems to have made a good bargain with the College, obtaining the full salary up to Lady Day,3 although he left Eton in the preceding August or September. The dismissal of Langley did not put an end to the cor- respondence between Bishop Barlow and Sir Henry Savile, as difficulties arose about the choice of a new Head-Master. The Bishop was anxious that the vacant post should be offered to some Kingsman, but the Provost insisted on promoting Richard Wright, the Usher, who was an alien.'* Then the Bishop wrote to say that the new Usher ought to be a bachelor and a layman : — " As for the Usher to be a Presbyter, though unmarried, I marveill that it should bee once thought of amongst you, for doo you not take it a grosse abasing of our sacred function, that a Priest should either bee or bee entituled an hostiariiis . . God's glory is never better meinteined then where dead mens' wills are truly executed, not crossing His will." 5 Richard Wright was elected to a Fellowship when he had been Head-Master for two months only, and then the Provost appointed a Kingsman, Matthew Bust the younger, although expressly declaring that this qualification had not influenced him in any way.* The new Usher, William Otes, was also a Kingsman, and so when Sir Henry Savile wrote to announce these changes to Sir Dudley Carleton, he added : — " I hope I ■ Lambeth MS. t 20. August 1611. ' Ibid. {. 23. Sept. 16, 161 1. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1611— 1612. * Lambeth MS. vol. dclxiii. ff. 22, 23, 26. 5 Ibid. f. 25. Oct. I, 161 1. ' Ibid. f. 26. 1 98 THE PLA GUE 4T E TON. have pleased those of King's College now ; at lest I have pleased myself." ' It will easily be believed that the study of Greek made considerable progress at Eton under Savile's auspices, and we have already noticed several small books in that language which he caused to be printed there for use in the School. To his influence may safely be ascribed the introduction of a text-book, compiled by his friend William Camden, Head- Master of Westminster, which, after being superseded at that school about 1650 by Busby's Grammar, came to be known as the Eton Greek Grammar, and has survived to our own day."" We know nothing about the pastimes of the boys in the reigns of Elizabeth and James L, except that a tennis-court was maintained by the College.s The plague appeared at Eton in i6o3,t and again in 1605 or 1606. On the second occasion, a messenger was sent to convey the news to the Provost, who was on his " progress," or visitation of distant estates belonging to the College.^ Four years later, a similar epidemic broke out at Windsor, and a payment "to Robert Keyne of Eton towards the charges of them that watched in Eton in the tyme of the sickness in Windsor," * may have been connected with an attempt to maintain a cordon at the bridge. Mention has already been made of the new buildings in the Stable Yard, ' Domestic State Papers, James I. vol. Ixvii. no. 59. November 24, 161 1 ; Eton Audit Book, 1610 — 161 1. " Paide to Thomas Holder- nes going to Cambridge with lettres in October last aboute providing an ussher for the schole, ^s." ' 'HaWaxa's Literature of Europe, (ed. 1854) vol. i. pp. 330, 518, n. 3 Eton Audit Book, 1600 — 1601. (Willis and Clark, vol. i.' p. 419.) For notices of contemporary tennis courts at Cambridge, see Willis and Clark, vol. iii. pp. 567 — 575. ■< Ibid. s Ibid. 1605— 1606. "To Mr. Foster supplying the Chaplyns' places in the Church to sale devine servis one moneth in the time of the infection, 8j." " Item to Thomas Lewen Mr. Provost man his charges riding to Mr. Provost in Progresse to certifie him of the state of Eton, being then visited with the plauge, 3^. Ad." ^ Eton Audit Book, 1609 — 1610. A messenger was also sent to the Provost at Oxford. DEATH OF S A VILE. 199 and of the repairs in the Library, and it may be added that a new organ-loft was erected in 1613 or 1614.' Some slight alterations were made in the Church on the occasion of a visit from James I. in 161 1 or 1612.= Sir Henry Savile appears to have been seriously ill in 1617, for several applications were made in that year for the reversion of the Provostship, Sir Henry Wotton and Sir Dudley Carleton being the most eminent of the candidates. Savile expressed his interest on behalf of the latter ; 3 but a more practical friend wrote to enquire how much he might offer for the place, as nothing could be done at Court without money.* It was at this period that patents of baronetcy were openly sold. The Provostship was eventually promised to Thomas Murray, who had been tutor and secretary to the Prince of Wales ; = but he had to wait several years for it. Sir Henry Savile died in February, 1622, and was buried in the Church at Eton, near a wooden statue of the Founder, which used to stand under the easternmost window on the south side.* Some two years later, his widow presented the College with a full-length por- trait of him in black robes and a lace ruff, which was at once hung in the most appropriate place — the Library.? It is now a conspicuous object in the Provost's dining-room, and it fully confirms Aubrey's statement that Savile " was an extraordinary handsome man ; no lady had a finer complexion." ^ James I. guarded against any unexpected action on the part of the Fellows by writing, more than a week before Sir Henry Savile's death, to order them to suspend the election until his pleasure should be declared.' It was already ' Eton Audit Book, 1613— 1614. ' Ibid. 1611— 1612. 3 Domestic State Papers, James I. vol. xciii. nos. 74, 153. * Ibtd. vol. xcii. no. 43. 5 Ibid. no. 49. « Shane MS. 4843, f. 533. ? Eton Audit Book, 1623— 1624. " To the Joyner for deales and workemanshipp in lyneing Sir Henry Savile's picture in the Libe- rary given by the Lady Savile, 5 j." ' Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. ii. p. 525. ' Eton Register, vol. iii. f, 34. February 10, 162 1. 20O THOMAS MURRA Y. well-known, however, that he had made his choice. John WiUiams, who was then Lord Keeper as well as Bishop of Lincoln, made a creditable, though feeble, attempt to divert the King from his purpose. He could fairly urge that Murray was triply disqualified — as not being an Englishman, a graduate, or a priest. On the 23rd of February, he wrote to the Marquess of Buckingham : — " This is altogether differing from a Deanery or an Hospital, which, being livings without cure, have been and may be justly confer'd by his Majesty on laymen, with dispensation de non promovendo. If Sir Henry Savil's example be objected, I answer .... that Savil never durst take true possession of the place, but was only slipt in by the bishop (who for fear of the Earl of Essex made bold with the conscience) ad curani et regimen CoUegii." The Bishop adds that Murray had just called on him, but could not be persuaded to enter holy orders. " I schooled him soundly against Puritanism which he disavows, though some- what faintly." ' This letter must have arrived too late, for a royal mandate to the Fellows and a dispensation in favour of Murray are also dated the 23rd of February.'' The Fellows lost no time in obeying the King's instructions ; but Bishop Williams was very tenacious of his own rights as Visitor of the College, and on the 26th of the same month, he wrote to say that the proceedings had been informal in several particulars, and could not be recognised by him as valid. He therefore ordered the Fellows to meet at 8 A.M. to read over the royal dispensation, and to elect Murray to an eighth Fellowship, and then to adjourn till 3 P.M., when, " reading first the King's gracious lettres which you are to terme lettres of recoman- dacons and not mandates," they might elect Murray as Provost. They were specially cautioned against using the word "admitting," which denoted the proper function of the Visitor, and ordered to " blotte it or raze it owt " of the ' Cabala, p. 289. ] = Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 34. THOMAS MURRAY. 201 College Register if it had been used at the informal election." The Bishop carried his point, enforced a new election on the 28th of February,^ and ' admitted ' Murray on the 2nd of the following month. Williams was less successful in a controversy with the College a few weeks later, about a Fellowship which fell vacant. Being of opinion that the right of nomination in this instance had lapsed to him as Visitor, he promised the place to John Hacket, at that time his chaplain, and afterwards his biographer. However, when the Provost and Fellows met in the ' Chappel ' for the election,^ Hacket, being quite unknown to them, received only one vote. Another candidate was rejected on account of his youth, and finally John Smyth, of King's College, was chosen Fellow by five votes. This fairly drove the Bishop into a rage. He declared that his nominee had been slighted " in a meere faction and opposition " ; he refused to admit Smyth ; and he threatened that he would have the number of Fellowships made up to ten, as ordered by the Founder. He boasted, moreover, that many of the Fellows were entirely at his mercy " by reason of forfeiture of their places. For having no dispensacion they have annext ecclesiasticall livings to their places above statuteable valew, for the dispensacion given by Queene Elizabeth, beeing personal! and from hirselfe, moritur aim persona, and since hir death hath beene of no validity." The Fellows replied that Elizabeth's dispensation had been granted by her for herself and her successors, and that its authority had never yet been questioned. They offered no objection to the proposed in- crease in the number of Fellowships, provided that the lands ' Lambeth MS. vol. dclxiv. f. 106. ^ Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 35. 3 This is perhaps the earliest in- stance in which the Collegiate Church of Eton is styled a " Chapel." The older and more correct designation was not un- frequently used in common par- lance even within the last fifty years and has always been retained in legal documents. 202 THOMAS MURRAY. taken away by Edward IV. were first restored.' In the end the Bishop had to give way ; John Smyth retained his Fellow- ship until 1635 ; and Hacket never obtained a place at Eton. Murray died from the effects of a painful operation within fourteen months after his election to the Provostship, and was buried in the Church, where his widow erected in his memory a pompous monument, elaborately painted and gilded, opposite to the simple epitaph of his illustrious predecessor, Savile. ■ Lambeth MS. vol. dclxi. ff. 179, 182 ; vol. dclxiv. f. 113. no j=f-^ Monument of Provost Murray. i623— 1639. Contest for the Provostship — Lord Bacon — Sir Henry Wotton — Pillars in the Schoolroom — Thomas Weaver — Robert Boyle — Prosperous Condition of the School — Commensals — Contest for Fellowships— The ' Ever-memorable ' John Hales — Death of Sir Henry Wotton. HE hopeless character of Murray's illness became known in London nearly two months before his death, and gave rise to a long and keen competition for the Provostship. Sir Henry Wotton and Sir Dudley Carleton renewed their former applications, and the number of candidates soon in- creased to seven — all laymen, and all of at least knightly rank. Foremost among them was the ex-Chancellor, Lord St. Albans. When staying at the Lodge at Eton in the days of his pros- perity. Bacon would have found it hard to believe that he himself would soon stoop to be a suppliant for the post then occupied by his friend and host. Sir Henry Savile.' But now, feeling that his political career was ended, he was anxious to obtain employment of a safer and less ambitious character. ' Lord Bacon's Works, (ed. 1824) vol. v. p. 328. 204 BACON'S APPLICATION. With this object he addressed a petition to the King,' and at the same time besought the assistance of the Secretary of State, Sir Edward Conway, to whom he wrote : — " Mr. Thomas Murray Provost of Eton (whome I love very well) is like to dye. It were a prety cell for my fortune. The College and Schoole I doe not dout but I shall make to flowrysh. His M[ajesty] when I wayted on him, tooke notice of my wants, and said to me that as he was a King he would have care of me. This is a thing somebody must have, and costs his M[ajesty] nothing."^ This last point is twice dwelt upon in Bacon's letter to the King, and gives a hint as to the condition of the royal coffers. Conway answered two days later, that the Provost- ship had already been promised to Sir William Beecher, Clerk of the Privy Council, but that if his claims could be satisfied in any other way, Bacon's request should be granted.^ With this answer the latter seems to have been fairly satisfied, for he wrote again on the 29th of March : — • '' I am much comforted by your last letter, whearin I fynd that his M[ajesty] of his great goodnesse vouchesafeth to have a care of me, a man owt of sight and owt of use, but yet his (as the Scripture saieth, God knowes those that are his) Thear will hardly fall (specially in the spent howreglasse of such a life as myne) anything so fitt for me being a retreat to a place of study, so near London, and whear (if I sell my house at Gorhambury, as I purpose to doe to putt myself into some convenient plenty) I may be accomodated of a dwelling for the summer tyme."* In both these letters. Bacon took care to assure Conway that his candidature would receive the support of the Marquess of Buckingham. The allusions to this arrogant favourite are ' Domestic State Papers,]zxn^%\. vol. cxl. no. 32. - Ibid. vol. cxl. no. 33. ^ Ibid. no. 44. ■• Ibid. no. 59. THE PROVOSTSHIP VACANT. 205 significant, for in all matters of patronage his influence was supreme. Buckingham was then absent with the Prince of Wales on his ill-starred expedition to Spain, but he received the intelligence of Murray's death from the Lord Keeper Williams, who wrote : — "The place is stayed by the Fellows and myself, untill your lordship's pleasure be known. Whomsoever your lordship shall name, I shall like of, even should it be Sir William Beecher, though the Provostship never descended so low. The King named unto me yesterday Sir Albertus Morton, Sir Dudley Carleton, and Sir Robert Ayton, our late Queen's secretary ; but in my opinion, though he named him last, his Majesty inclined to this Ayton most. It will rest wholly with your lordship to name the man. It is somewhat necessary to be a good scholar, but more that he be a good husband and a careful manager, and a stayed man, which no man can be that is so much indebted as my Lord St. Albans." ' Towards the end of April, Sir Ralph Freeman, a Master of Requests, was considered to have the best chance of obtaining the Provostship, though Ayton was said to have offered to barter his pension of 500/. for it.'' In the absence of Buckingham, however, nothing could be settled. The situation of affairs at Court is well described by the Countess of Bedford, who writes to Carleton that " those that are nearest the well-head, know not with what bucket to draw for themselves or their friends." 3 Time went on, but as Buckingham remained in Spain, the Vice-Provost received permission from the King to transact College business, and to seal leases, while the profits arising from the vacant post were enjoyed by the relict of the late Provost. ■» Mrs. Murray must have appreciated her position ■ Ackerman's History of Eton, p. SO. " Domestic State Papers, James I. vol. cxliii. no. 62 ; vol. cxliv. no. 27. 3 Ibid. vol. cxliii. no. 63. ■• Ibid. vol. cl. nos. 51, 52 ; vol. clx. no. 58. 206 SIR HENRY WOTTON. at Eton, and have found the Lodge a pleasant residence, for rumour said that she was quite willing to remain there as the wife of Sir Robert Ayton, if he should succeed in obtaining the Provost^hip.' Bacon sent in a final but fruitless application to Sir Edward Conway in September, protesting that he was able to " doe as much good to the College as another, be it square capp or rownd." ^ Buckingham returned to England in October, 1623, and was fairly tormented by the importunities of the rival candidates.3 One of them, Sir Henry Wotton, took the earliest opportunity of sending him some pictures which he had purchased for him at Venice on commission, but which were at the time erroneously supposed to be a present, or rather a bribe.* It is quite clear, however, that Wotton did everything in his power to ingratiate himself with the powerful favourite, and he finally succeeded in obtaining the Provostship, on surrendering his reversion of the Mastership of the Rolls to Sir Ralph Freeman, who in turn yielded his place to Sir William Beecher.s Fifteen months elapsed between the death of Murray and the election of Wotton, which took place on the 24th of July, 1624,^ four days after the issue of a royal mandate in his favour, which mentioned " his many abilities, faithfull services and travailes ... in negociating with foraine Princes and States," and "his learninge and integritie." ' He was formally admitted on the 26th, but he went down to Eton so ill-provided with money that " the Fellows were fain to furnish his bare walls." ^ He ' Domestic State Papers, James I . vol. clx. no. 58. ^ Ibid. vol. clii. no. 12. 3 Ibid. vol. cliii. no. 32 ; vol. cliv. no. 19. ■• ReliquicB Wottoniana, (ed. 1672) p. 316; Domestic State Papers, vol. clxi. no. 49. 5 Ibid. vol. clviii. ; no. 72 vol. clxii. no. 13. ^ Eton Register, vol. iii. ' The mandamus is printed at length in Carlisle's Grammar Schools, vol. i. p. 72. * Eton Register, vol. iii. ; Do- mestic State Papers, James I. vol. S/Ji HENRY WOTTON. 207 soon managed to procure 500/. out of the arrears owing to him by the State, and so settled down quietly in his new house, which was, "to his mind, as a quiet harbour to a seafaring man after a tempestuous voyage ; where by- the bounty of the pious Founder, his very food and raiment were plentifully provided in kind ; where he was free from corrod- ing cares, and seated on such a rock as the waves of want could not possibly shake." ' In spite of this, Wotton never succeeded in freeing himself from the debts with which he was burdened. Some of these were, doubtless, contracted abroad in the public service, and up to the time of his death he had claims on the Exchequer,'-' but for others he must be held personally responsible. Walton styles him an " undervaluer of money " in a well- known passage in the Complete Angler, which may be coupled with another in the Lives, where he is described as " being always so careless of money, as though our Saviour's words, ' Care not for the morrow,' were to be literally understood." The emoluments of the Provostship certainly did not satisfy Wotton's wants, and he speaks of it as " never before subsisting in the memory of man without some addition." 3 In 1628, we find him asking the King to grant him the " next good Deanery,'' and, some years later, he applied for the Mastership of the Savoy, as likely to afford him a convenient residence in London.* Isaac Walton's biography of Wotton is so deservedly popular, that it would be superfluous to attempt more than the briefest account of his career previous to his appointment as Provost. Etonians have special grounds for lamenting that the same writer did not carry out clxxi. no. 25. The Eton Audit Book, 1624 — 1625, records a pay- ment "to Mr. Provost by consent at the end of the Auditt 1624, to- wards the furnyture of his lodginge, 40/." ' Walton's Lives. ' Reliquia Wottoiiiana, pp. 563, 564. See his will in Walton. ' Ibid. p. 340. ■* Ibid. pp. 340, 564. 2o8 S/Ji HENRY WOTTON. his projected Lives of Sir Henry Savile and " the ever- memorable " John Hales.' Henry Wotton was descended from a gentle Kentish family, several members of which had served their country with distinction in various capacities. He was educated at Winchester, and at New College, Oxford, whence he subsequently removed to Queen's. After leaving the University, he travelled for nine years, studying the laws and languages of the countries through which he passed. Returning to England, he was appointed secretary to the Earl of Essex ; but on the fall of that nobleman he thought it prudent to quit England, and so remained abroad, chiefly at Florence, until after the death of Elizabeth. He rose into high favour with the Grand-Duke Ferdinand, and was selected by him to forewarn James VI. of Scotland of a dangerous plot against his life. Assuming the dress and name of an Italian, and taking a circuitous route in order to avoid England, Wotton reached Stirling in safety, and delivered his message to the King in person. This good service was not forgotten by James, who, soon after his accession to the English throne, recalled Wotton from the Continent, embraced him cordially, and dubbed him a knight. Wotton's discretion, and his fluency in foreign languages, seemed to mark him out for a diplomatic career. He was accordingly entrusted with a succession of special missions, to Venice, to Savoy, and to the Emperor Ferdinand. He does not appear to have held his profession in high esteem, and he very nearly fell into disgrace for writing the following definition in a German album : — " Legatus est vir bonus peregre missus ad mentiendum Reipublicm causa!' Walton would have us believe that the meaning intended ' Life of Walton prefixed to the Complete Angler. S/R HENRi^ IVOTTON. 209 was : — " An Ambassador is an honest man sent to lie ' abroad for the good of his country," though it is obvious that there is no double-enfendre in the Latin, or in the corresponding German. When a would-be diplomatist applied to Wotton for advice, he told him to " speak the truth " on all occasions " For," said he, " you shall never be believed ; and by this means your truth will secure yourself, if you shall ever be called to any account ; and 'twill put your adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a losse in all their disquisitions and undertakings." Soon after his election to the Provostship of Eton, Sir Henry Wotton decided on taking deacon's orders, his chief reason for doing so, according to his own as well as his biographer's account, being a laudable desire to comply with the statutes of the College. But, with a conscience so tender on this point, it seems strange that he should have been content to remain merely " in the porch of God's house," instead of entering priest's orders, as clearly enjoined by Henry VI. In announcing this step to King Charles, he stated that he would thereby be enabled to hold " canonically " the place which he had held before " dispensatively," and " exercise an archidiaconal authority annexed thereunto, though of small extent and no benefit, yet sometimes of pious and necessary use." He also expressed a hope that by his example young Etonians of good family would be encouraged to join the ranks of the clergy, not being ashamed, " after the sight of courtly weeds, to put on a surplice." ^ Isaac Walton has given us many interesting details of his friend's mode of life at Eton. After attending the daily service, Wotton used to devote several hours of the forenoon to the study of divinity, to meditation, and private prayer. " But when he was once sate to dinner, then nothing but ' lie = reside. I PP- 327, 328. " ReUquiaWottoniati(e,(e6..\(>T2) I 2IO 5//0 HENRY WOTTON. chearful thoughts possessed his mind ; and those still increased by constant company at his table, of such persons as brought thither additions both of learning and pleasure," and " where his meat was choice and his discourse better." Some portions of every day were given to philosophy or to literature. Wotton projected several important works, but he did not bring any of them to completion. A Life of Martin Oak Tree in the Shooting Fields. Luther was laid aside, at the request of Charles I., for a History of England , but for this history, only a few sketches of characters were ever drawn out,' and his literary reputation rests chiefly on a pamphlet entitled The Elements of Architecture written some years previously, and, on his Poems. One of the best known of these relates to his favourite pursuit of fishing, which was one of the chief points of sympathy between Wotton and Walton. The two friends ' Walton's Lives. S/Ji HENRY WOTTON. i\i spent many summer hours together at Black Potts on the Thames, just below the Shooting Fields, still a frequent resort of fishermen. Wotton used to say that angling was "an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent ; for angling was, after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness," and that it "begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it." ' So keen was he for this sport, that he used to say that "he would rather live five May months than forty Decembers." It must not be supposed from this account of Wotton's occupations and pleasures that he neglected the interests of Eton. " He was a constant cherisher of all those youths in that school, in whom he found either a constant diligence, or a genius that prompted them to learning, for whose encourage- ment he was, besides many other things of necessity and beauty, at the charge of setting up in it two rows of pillars, on which he caused to be choicely drawn the pictures of divers of the most famous Greek and Latin historians, poets, and orators, persuading them not to neglect rhetorick, because Almighty God hath left mankind affections to be wrought upon. And he would often say, ' That none despised eloquence, but such dull souls as were not capable of it.' He would also often make choice of some observations out of those historians and poets ; and would never leave the school without dropping some choyce Greek or Latine apothegme or sentence, such as were worthy of a room in the memory of a growing scholar. He was pleased constantly to breed up one or more hopeful youths, which he picked out of the school, and took into his own domestic care, and to attend him at his meals ; out of whose discourse and behaviour he gathered observations for the better completing of his in- tended work of education." ■ Walton's Complete Angler. V 2 212 S/R HENRY WOTTON. The double row of wooden pillars in the Lower School was erected at this time, but probably more for the purpose of supporting the floor of the Long Chamber than for any other reason. As Sir Henry Wotton had acquired a taste for Italian architecture in the course of his travels, he took care these pillars and other woodwork at Eton should not be executed in a style which he stigmatised as " Gothic.'' Another memorial of Wotton's residence at Eton is a large picture of Venice which now hangs in the Election Hall. It bears the following inscription : — " Henricus Wottonius, post tres apud Venetos legationes ordinarias, in Etonensis Collegii beato sinu senescens, ejusque, cum suavisima inter se sociosque Concordia, annos jam 12 prcefecius, hanc miram urbis quasi natantis effigieni in aliquam siii memoriam juxta socialem mensam affixit. i6j6r ' The following note, written at the beginning of a Hebrew book in the Eton Library,^ records the munificence of a less distinguished member of the College : — " Anno Domini 162 j. Thomas Wever, Fellow of Eton, erected and built in the Collegiate Church ther, one great frame of tymber under the great arch in the west end of the said Church carved with the armes of King Henerie the Sixt of famous memorie, Fownder of the two Colledges the one in Eton and the other in Cambridg, with the armes of Queene Elizabeth (a second Fownder and preserver of Colledges by enacting the Statute of Provision), the armes of the two Universities, and the armes of the College of Eton and the Kings College in Cambridge, and diverse other armes. He gave a Communion Cupp guilded, worth xx markes, and sett up a Communion Table. He sett up seates for the Oppidans, and the great pew under the pulpitt for the use of the ' Eton Audit Book, 1639 — 1640. and Library given by Mr. Provost, "To the waterman bringing from 3"- 6*-" London to the Colledge sixe pic- " Bomberg's Pentateuch, Shelf tures in frames for the Schoole ' D. c. 9. THOMAS WEAVER. 213 Fellowes, Scholmaster, and their families. He gave fowre strong formes to stand in the lies of the Church for the Townemen to sitt on. He gave two deskes graven with the CoUedge armes for the Fellowes to read Prayers. He adorned the deskes for the Clerks. He translated the Vestrie, built the Portall. He repaired the seat in Dr. Lupton's Chappell and sett up a presse ther to laye up the Song-books. He repaired the seates and pewes on the north and south sides of the Church : besides diverse other things. The Colledge alowed him towards the work six loades of rough tymber. Anno Domini 162^. Laus Deo!' The College also paid "for guiltinge the cross upon the new worke in the Church." ' Nothing now remains of all this, except possibly the seats in the nave, or ante-chapel, which look as if they might have been executed about this period. Thomas Weaver took a great interest in the manu- facture of woodwork, and was the donor of the large coats of arms carved in elm-wood which form the back of the stalls under the canopies in the Chapel of King's College.^ There may have been some truth in two of the accusations made against him at Archbishop Laud's visitation of Eton in 1634, by the Chaplains and Clerks, who deposed that he had made a sawpit in the churchyard, and that he had once shortened morning prayer on a holy-day so as to have more time " to pull downe a tree." The other charges against Weaver were, that he was irregular in his attendance at church on week days, and that he often omitted the prayer for the King.3 However, his munificence to the Church, and his subsequent deprivation, seem to show that he could not have been either a Puritan or a Republican. The seats of the Provost and Vice-Provost in the Church ' Eton Audit Book, 1623— 1624. ' Cooper's Memorials of Cam- bridge, vol. ii. p. 213. = Answers to Laud's Visitation Articles 1635, printed 'va.\};\i. Fourth Report of the Historical Manu- scripts Commission, pp. 147 — 148. 214 ROBERT BOYLE. were probably more pompous than beautiful, as they had windows made of oak, but painted over.' Some altar-rails were set up about this period in conformity to the wishes of Laud and other bishops. '^ One of the bells was called " the Saints' bell," but it can have had little connexion with the Sanctus bell of older days.3 A stone staircase on the south was substituted for the old wooden one in 1625,* but several pay- ments recorded under the Church expenses at this period for " destroying the starres," must refer to starlings rather than stairs, as " powder and shot " would hardly have been employed against the latter.s Another troublesome intruder was a dog, which was said to have broken several windows in the vestry and in Lupton's Chapel ; but the extent of the damage was so great, that we may reasonably suspect some mischievous biped to have been the real offender.^ Charges for oaken bars for the windows occur every year at this period. One of the most distinguished Etonians of the seventeenth century, the Hon. Robert Boyle, has left some account of his school-days in the autobiography of Philaretus. From this it appears that he and hi^ brother, the sons of Lord Cork, were sent to Eton in 1635, Robert the younger being then between eight and nine years of age. They were placed under the special protection of Sir Henry Wotton, who is described as " a person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but well skilled in the art of making others so." However, they naturally saw less of the Provost than of the Head-Master, John Harrison, with whom Robert Boyle soon became a great favourite, on account of his aptitude for ' Eton Audit Book, 1624 — 1625. I Saynts bell at \2d. the pound," &c. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 446.) = Ibid. 1631 — 1632. "New paintynge the pale about the com- munyon table." These rails were removed to Burnham Church, after ■• Ibid. 1624 — 1625. 5 Ibid. ^ Ibid. 1632— 1633. " To the glasier repayring the windowes in the Church and Luptons Chappie the alterations at Eton in 1700. j and the vestrie much broken by a ^ Ibid. 1634 — 1635. "For iiij" I dogg left by error there, 4/. 3.y. 2rf." pound and a q'=™= of Rope for the ' ROBERT BOYLE. 215 learning. His teacher " would often dispense with his attend- ance at school at the accustomed hours, to instruct him privately and familiarly in his chamber " ; and " would often, as it were, cloy him with fruit and sweetmeats, and those little dainties that age is greedy of, that, by preventing the want, he might lesson both the value and desire of them. He would sometimes give him unasked playdays, and oft bestow upon him such balls and tops and other implements as he had taken away from others that had unduly used them." Harrison used to instruct his pupil in " an affable, kind, and gentle way " ; but William Norris, his successor, who was probably less partial in the enforcement of discipline, is styled " a rigid fellow." It appears that instruction was at this period given in mathematics as well as in Latin and Greek.' Lord Cork's sons were Commensals at the second table, and it is expressly stated that the School was " then very much thronged with young nobility." The audit-books give the names of Sir Francis Fane, Sir Henry Newton, Lord Henry Kerr, and Lord Mordaunt, among others. The Earl of Northampton had no less than four sons at Eton in 1635, all of whom afterwards distinguished themselves in the Royalist cause. The eldest was called Lord Compton by courtesy, but at school the others were styled " Compton a" " Compton i," and " Compton -yninor,'' respectively. So too the Boyles were known as " Boyle a " and " Boyle i," the latter being the younger.^ The Provost and Fellows had occasion to be watchful over the morals of the Commensals, when a regiment of soldiers was quartered at Eton about this time, in violation of the privileges granted to the College by Henry VI. A remon- strance was at once forwarded to the Duke of Buckingham, then Lord Lieutenant of the county, pointing out the incon- venience caused to " the youth repairing to the Schole, and ' Boyle's Works, (ed. 1744) vol. I ' Eton Audit Books. i-PP-7-9- ' 2l6 CONTESTS FOR PLACES. lodging in the towne, with whom such companie doo not well comport,"' and there is every reason to believe that the soldiers were soon removed. The College was not always so tenacious of its rights, for on several occasions it submitted to the exaction of shipmoney,^ although it had been specially exempted by charter from contributing towards the defence of the kingdom.3 The Provost and Fellows may have looked upon their contributions as gifts to the King. No visit of Charles I. to the College has been recorded, but his consort went there in 1628 or 1629.'' In November 1631, an entertainment was given to the first Earl of Holland and other noblemen.5 Throughout the later part of the reign of James I., and the earlier part of his son's reign, Scholarships at Eton were in the greatest demand. Year after year the Provost was assailed with importunate letters from all sides. Of course. Sir Henry Wotton could not satisfy everybody, and he used to find that each election lost him several friends.'' In a very character- istic letter he says : — " We have newly concluded our anniversary business, which hath been the most distracted election that, I verily believe, had ever before been seen, since this nurse first gave milk, through no less than four recommendatory and one " Do?nestic State Papers, Charles I. vol. cclxxiv. No. 12. " Eton Audit Book, 1635 — 1637. " To his Majestie for shipp monie, 4o.y." ; Il>id.i6yj — 1638. "For ship monie for the CoUedge lands at Burnham''; Ibid. " To his Majestie for ship monie, 3/." 3 Heywood and Wright's Sta- tutes, pp. 408, 409. * Eton Audit Book, 1628 — 1629. " To the drawer of the Christopher for certain bottles wherein he brought wyne to the College at the tyme of the Queen's cominge, which bottles afterwards could not be found, iij=- vj""-" ^ Ibid. 1631 — 1632. "For two gallons and one pinte of Renische wyne brought from London upon expectation of my Lord of Roland's coming, viij^- v""- " " Lost in re- torninge back of the banquett to the appoticarie, vij"- " " Laide out upon the comeinge of thearle of Holland and other nobles to the Colledge, Novemb'' xxij", viz. in sack ij^- vj*- In clarett wyne iiij^', for vj tortches v=-, in sum, xj*- vj''- " ^ ReliquiceWottoniance, (ed.1672) P- 557- ETON FELLOWSHIPS. 217 mandatory letter from the King himself ; besides inter- cessions and messengers from divers great personages for boys both in and out, enough to make us think ourselves shortly Electors of the Empire if it hold on." ' While mere Scholarships were thus eagerly sought for, there was no lack of candidates for such Fellowships as happened to fall vacant. The parishioners of Windsor, unsuccessful in a petition to James I. in favour of their vicar, presented a somewhat similar one to Charles I., requesting him to increase the value of the living by annexing to it some ecclesiastical benefice. The King took the matter into consideration, and finally decided that a Fellowship at Eton should for ever be reserved for the vicar of Windsor for the time being. The royal commands to this effect were conveyed to the Provost and Fellows in a letter from Archbishop Laud and the Lord Keeper Coventry, dated November 3, 1634. A vacancy occurring in the next year, John Cleaver of Windsor, was duly elected, to the great satisfaction of his flock, who caused the church bells to be rung in honour of the event^ The news of this arrangement was not well received at King's College. Aliens had indeed frequently obtained Fellowships at Eton without opposition, but this new order seemed to threaten the entire subversion of the privileges of the sister foundation. It was obviously difificult, if not im- possible, to procure an absolute revocation of the obnoxious decree, and the Provost and Fellows of King's adopted a more judicious course in addressing a petition to the Arch- bishop, demanding that all future vicars of Windsor should be elected from among their own body, and thus be qualified to hold Fellowships at Eton. 3 Inasmuch as Laud was just ' ReliquialVottoniancE, (ed.1672) p. 567- " Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor, vol. ii. p. 83 108— no, o^o\x!\g Ashmolean MS. i I26,ff. Zbb, 113 b, and Church- wardens' Ac- counts. 3 Sloane MS. 4841, ff. 227 — 228. 2i8 ARTICLES OF COMPLAINT. commencing a visitation of his province,' the time was opportune for the presentation of certain " Articles of Com- plaint " on the part of the Kingsmen. Their principal grievance was the reduction in the number of the Eton Fellowships from ten, as originally ordered, to seven, as then existing. The Kingsmen maintained that the College revenues had not sunk so low as to justify any reduction whatever in numbers, but that even if some such reduction were necessary, it should be made among the Clerks, Chor- isters, and Scholars, rather than among the Fellows : they looked upon Eton as something more than a school. Another complaint was directed against the frequent practice of be- stowing Fellowships on Oxford men and other aliens. These matters affected the Kingsmen closely, but they attempted to strengthen their case by introducing other complaints of a more disinterested character, and accordingly espoused the cause of the Scholars, who, they said, were " deprived of breakfasts, clothing, bedding, and all other necessaries, which the statute amply allows them, and forced to be content with a bare scanty diet and a coarse short gown, whilst the College revenues are shared amongst a few.'' ^ The Archbishop heard both parties at some length with regard to the principal Articles of Complaint, and pronounced his decision in 1636. While admitting the claims of the Kingsmen to be technically correct, and blaming the Eton authorities in several respects, he declared that he could not overlook the " contemporanean exposition, and the practice " of nearly two centuries, which went " quite cross to the statute." Considering too that Edward IV. had not allowed the College to enjoy all the endowments assigned to it by the Founder, and that the number of actual Fellowships had ' The Visitation Articles for Eton College are printed va. Laud's Works, (ed. 1847) vol. V. pp. 468—471, and in the Fourth Report of the Historical Manicscripts Commission, where the answers are also given. ° Shane MS. 4841, ff. 253 — 262. LA UUS DECREE. 219 never exceeded seven, Laud decided that that number need not be increased, but that five of these places should for ever be absolutely reserved for members of the sister foundation.' It is worthy of remark that Laud, who might have been ex- pected to insist upon the literal observance of ancient ordin- ances, thus adopted the liberal policy of throwing open two of the Fellowships, in direct violation of the statutes. The arrangement thus made by him was not, however, destined to take effect for some time, in consequence of " the confusion of all good order in the time of the Great Rebellion, and the importunity of pretenders to preferment at the King's return." '^ We shall hear more of this controversy in the next chapter. Queen Elizabeth's letter of dispensation, by which the Fellows were allowed to hold other ecclesiastical preferment, was confirmed by a licence granted in 1629 to Daniel Collins, to hold two livings not exceeding the value of 40 marks a year, in addition to a prebend at Windsor.3 Prebends at Windsor were also granted to David Stokes, and, under somewhat re- markable circumstances, to John Hales, the only Fellow of Eton at that period who demands special notice.* John Hales has already been mentioned as the friend and coadjutor of Sir Henry Savile, but it was in the reign of Charles I. that he attained distinction as a member of a brilliant circle of statesmen and authors, who bestowed on him the title " ever-memorable." He owed the epithet less to the extent of his literary works, which occupy three very small volumes, than to the charm of his conversation and manner. " When the King and Court resided at Windsor, he was much frequented by noblemen and courtiers, who delighted much in his company, not for his severe and retired walks of learning, but for his polite discourses, stories, and poetry." He is ' Laud's Works, vol. v. p. 497. " Sloane MS. 4841, f. 236, quoting MS. by Archbishop Sancroft. 3 Rymer's Fosdera, (ed. Sander- son) vol. xix. pp. 66, 67. ■• Domestic State Papers, Charles I. vol. ccccxxiii. no, 100. 220 JOHN HALES. mentioned by name in the Session of Poets by Sir John Suckling, with whom, as well as with Ben Jonson, Davenant, and Lord Falkland, he was intimate. Clarendon says that he would " once in a year resort to London, only to enjoy their chearful conversation." ' One of these visits to London and its theatre was perhaps suggested by the rhyming invitation addressed to Hales by Suckling : — " Whether these lines do find you out Putting or clearing of a doubt ; (Whether Predestination, Or reconciling Three in One, Or the unridling how men die And live at once eternally, Now take you up,) know 'tis decreed You straight bestride the College steed. Leave Socinus and the schoolmen (Which Jack Bond swears do but fool men) And come to town ; 'tis fit you show Yourself abroad, that men may know (Whate'er some learned men have guest) That Oracles are not yet ceased ; There you shall find the wit, and wine. Flowing alike, and both divine ; Dishes with names not known in books And less amongst the College cooks, With sauce so poignant that you need Not stay till hunger bids you feed.' These were but interludes in a life of deep study. " His industry did strive, if it were possible, to equal the largeness of his capacity, whereby he became as great a master of polite, various, and universal learning as ever yet conversed with books." ^ " He was one of the least men in the kingdom, ' Lord Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. I ° Bishop Pearson's Preface to 7g. I the Golden Remains. JOHN HALES. 221 and one of the greatest scholars in Europe." ' Sir Henry Wotton used to call him " bibliotheca ambulans." " Hales was deeply versed in the writings of the early Fathers, from which he made frequent quotations, though he utterly disclaimed their authority in matters of controversy. In his younger days he had been a Calvinist, but the argu- ments of the Arminian party at the Synod of Dort induced him, as he quaintly expressed it, to " bid John Calvin good- night.'' Together with the teaching of Episcopius on the five disputed points of Predestination, &c., he imbibed his objections to all dogmatic teaching. Hales himself main- tained that universality was no test of the truth of any doctrine, for " universality is but a quainter and trimmer name to signify the multitude " ; 3 that liturgies should be purged of " whatever is scandalous to any party," and consist only of " such things as those in which all Christians do agree " ; 4 that the power of the keys could be exercised by anybody— by a muleteer as well as by a parish priest ; s that " the spiritual eating of Christ is common to all places as well as the Lord's Table." ^ He assisted his friend Chillingworth in the com- position of the celebrated work, The Religion of Protestants : a Safe way to SalvationJ Both were considered apostles of the Latitudinarian school, and both were suspected of Socin- ianism. Hales was aware that the general diffusion of his opinions might have an unsettling effect on the faith of others, " and therefore he was very reserved in communicating what he thought himself on those points in which he differed from what was received."^ His works were first collected by a divine of more orthodox views — John Pearson, afterwards Bishop of Chester — who had been a boy at Eton when Hales ' Lord Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 62. " Reliquice Wottoniana, p. 475. 3 Hales' s Works, (ed. 1775) vol. iii. p. 164. ■• Ibid, vol i. pp. 125, 127. s I bid. vol. i. p. 102. ^ Ibid. vol. i. p. 62. ^ Wood's Athence Oxonienses, vol. iii. pp. 410 — 414. ^ Lord Clarendo7i' s Life, vol. i. p. 60. 222 JOHN HALES.- was a Fellow. One tract on Schism was privately circulated in manuscript during the author's life, and nearly brought him into trouble. A copy of it fell into the: hands of Laud, who demanded an explanation. Hales wrote to the Archbishop in defence of his proposition that the Church has no authority in matters of faith, but it is doubtful whether the letter was ever despatched : ' it would only have been an aggravation of the offence. A stormy interview, however, took place at Lambeth between Laud and Hales, after which the latter acknowledged to Heylin that he " had been ferreted from one hole to another, till there was none left to afford him any further shelter ; that he was now resolved to be orthodox, and to declare himself a true son of the Church of England, both for doctrine and dis- cipline." ^ After this. Laud appointed Hales one of his chap- lains, and procured for him a Canonry at Windsor, " unex- pected, undesired." 3 The latter accepted the post with reluctance, after much solicitation, " because he really believed he had enough before.'' * To what extent Hales recanted is, and will probably remain, uncertain. s His last writing was a defence of the doctrine of the Trinity. In some at least of his views he had a sympa- thiser in the Provost, who "' was a great enemy of wrangling disputes in religion." * " HiC JACET HUJUS SENTENTI^ PRIMUS AUTHOR DiSPUTANDI PRURITUS FIT ECCLESIARUM SCABIES. NOMEN ALIAS QU^RE." ■ Chalmers's Biographical Dic- tionary. ' Heylin's CyprianusAnglicanus, p. 362. 3 Reliqicice WottoniaruF, p. 369. * Lord Clarendon' s Life. s Desraaizeaux is at considerable pains in his Life of John Hales to discredit Heylin's narrative of the interview between Hales and Laud, but he does not account for the Archbishop afterwards favour- ing a clergyman who absolutely contradicted one or more of the Thirty-nine Articles, or for Hales's adherence to the dogmatical Liturgy of the Church of England after its proscription. * Walton's Lives. DEATH OF IVOTTON. 223 Such was the simple inscription which Sir Henry Wotton com- posed for his own tombstone. He died on the 5th of December, 1639, and was buried at Eton near his predecessor.' The in- scription on the ring which he bequeathed to each of the Fellows — Amor unit omnia — is in character with his epitaph and his life. ' Sloane MS. 4843, f. 358. The stone has since been moved into the nave, or ' ante-chapel,' and now forms part of one of the steps leading into the choir. Door leading from the Cloister to the Playing-Fieldi 1639 — i66o. Richard Steward — Political Troubles — Deprivation of the Provost — Appointment of Francis Rous — Rules for the Scholars — Ejectment of the Royalist Fellows — The Engagement — John Hales — Death, and Benefactions of ' Lord ' Rous — The Puritan Fellows — Nicholas Lockyer. HARLES I. experienced no difficulty in provid- ing a suitable successor to Sir Henry Wotton, and at once wrote to the Fellows in favour of Richard Steward, of All Souls' College, his Clerk of the Closet, who was duly elected on the. 28th of December, 1639.' The new Provost was a warm adherent of the orthodox Anglican party, as far removed in doctrine from Racow, as from Rome or Geneva. Clarendon describes him as "a very honest and learned gentleman, and most conversant in that learning which vindicated the dignity and authority of the Church, upon which his heart was most entirely set ; not without some prejudice to those who thought there was any other object to be more carefully pursued." ^ Charles I. had the highest opinion ' Eton Register, vol. iii. ff. 47, 288. Lord Clarendoit's Life, vol. i. p. RICHARD STEWARD. 225 of his piety and judgment, and recommended him to the Prince of Wales as a safe guide in matters of rehgion.' At the date of his election to the Provostship, Steward was Dean of Chichester, and he was afterwards nominated to the Deaneries of St. Paul's and of Westminster successively, but he was never installed in either of these two churches.'' In 1640, he was chosen Prolocutor of the Lower House of the memorable Convocation which attempted to prove its independence by enacting a code of canons, after the dissolution of Parliament.^ The time for this assertion of ecclesiastical authority was ill chosen, as the Scots were already in arms against the King, and the Puritan party in England was daily growing in strength and influence. One or more of the children of Charles I. came to visit Eton College in 1640 ;t but two years later their residence at Windsor was seized by the Parliamentary troops.^ On the outbreak of the civil war. Provost Steward attached himself to the King's person, taking with him the College seal,^ and probably some of the plate, as the ewer and basin given by Adam Robyns are the only pieces of silver, older than this date, which have been preserved at Eton. In his absence no regular elections were held ; but nine Scholars were admitted to King's College between 1642 and 1644.7 The election of 1643 was expressly postponed by a royal mandate from Oxford ; ^ and another effect of the political troubles, was the gradual extinction of the Commensals.9 Many of these scholars being the sons of Cavaliers, laid aside their books, and took up arms, while ' Clarendon's History of the Re- lellion, (ed. 1826) vol. vi. pp. 37, 572. " Le '^tyf^% Fasti Ecdesia Aiig- 3 Lathbury's History of Convoca- tion, p. 244. « Eton Audit Book, 1639— 1640. "Paid out by Mr. Provost for 20 gallons and 3 quarts of high cuntrie wyne at the Princes entertainment at the College, 2/. 1 5 j id." s Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor, vol. ii. p. 169. ^ Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 51. ' Registrum Regale. ^ Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 51. July 6, 1643. (Carlisle's Grammar Schools, vol. i. p. 73.) ' Eton Audit Books. O 226 PARLIAMENTARY ORDERS. those who did not leave school seem to have begun to board, as well as to lodge, at the dames' houses in the town. Meanwhile the Parliamentary party did not lose sight of Eton and its endowments. An ordinance of the House of Commons for confiscating the estates of all archbishops, bishops, deans, and deans and chapters, had an ominous sound ; but the Colleges of Westminster, Eton, and Winchester, and Christ Church, Oxford, were specially exempted from its operation in October, 1642.' In the following February, the statutes and canons which ordered the graduates and the Scholars to wear surplices in church were declared to be " against law, and the liberty of the subject." ^ In the last month of that year. Colonel Venn, whose iconoclastic fury had already been displayed at St. George's, was ordered to remove all " scandalous monuments and pictures ... in the several churches of Windsor and Eton." ^ In the same month a sequestration of the income of the Provost was granted to Sir H. Cholmeley, " to receive upon account, without prejudice to the Scholars and Fellows." ■* This sequestration, however, was soon removed, in order that the dignity as well as the revenues of the Provostship might be enjoyed by a member of the dominant party. An ordinance passed by the Lords at Westminster on the loth of February, 1644, declares that — "Whereas Richard Steward, Doctor of the Law, and Provost of Eaton Colledge, hath neglected the Government of the said College, and joined himself to those that have levied war against the Parliament For the better supply of that place of Eaton College, and for the good Government thereof by a person of learning and piety, the Lords and Commons in Parliament do order and ordain that the said Dr. Steward from henceforth shall be removed ' Co??imons'' Journals, vol. ii. p. 827. " Ibid. p. 972. ■'' Tighc and Davis's Annals of Windsor, vol. ii. pp. 181, 182 ; Common^ Journals, vol. iii. p. 348. * Ibid. vol. iii. p. 326. FRANCIS ROUS. 227 and wholly discharged from being any longer Provost of Eaton College ; and they do wholly remove and discharge him thereof to all intents and purposes ; and they do hereby constitute and ordain Francis Rous of Brixham within the County of Devon, esquire, to be Provost of the said College of Eaton, . . for and during the term of his natural life." - Steward's name appears no more after this in connexion with Eton.' He was the principal commissioner on behalf of the English Church at the Uxbridge Conference in 1645 ;'' and he became one of the most trusted advisers of Charles II. Had he lived to see the Restoration, he would doubtless have been offered a bishopric, but he died soon after the battle of Worcester, at St. Germains, where he was twice visited on his death-bed by his King.3 By his own desire, nothing was recorded of him on his tombstone except that " while living he prayed without ceasing for the peace of the Church." '• If the claims of episcopacy had an able advocate in Provost Steward, they had as zealous an opponent in his successor, Francis Rous, who sat as a layman in the Westminster Assembly of Divines.^ He was a Cornish gentleman of good family and education, and a member of the successive parliaments summoned during the reign of Charles I., in each of which he distinguished himself by his invectives against the Established Church, as well as against Armini- anism. A few months after his appointment to the Provost- ship of Eton, he seemed to be in danger of losing it, through the operation of the so-called ' Self-denying Ordinance,' but ' Lords' Journals vol. vi. p. 419 ; Commons' Journals vol. iii. p. 381. = Clarendon's History of the Re- bellion, (ed. 1826) vol. V. pp. 45, 54- 3 Wood's Athena Oxon., vol. iii. p. 297. See several letters and papers by Steward in Cosin's Cor- respondence (Surtees Society), vol. i. ■* " Nihil aliud hie inscribi voluit epitaphium qudm quod vivens as- sidue oravit pro pace ecclesice. Idem mine facit in ccelis ad qtios ?iinc abut." Kennett's Register, p. 261. 5 Neal's Lives of the Puritans (ed. 179s) vol. iii. p. 50. Q 2 RULES FOR THE SCHOLARS. he had sufficient influence in the House of Commons to cause an exception to be made in his own favour.' Being thus confirmed in his place, he brought forward an ordinance exempting the property of Eton College from taxation, and authorising an election of Scholars to be held "in manner as hath heretofore been accustomed."^ Although this ordinance was not passed till late in August, 1645, an election was held that year, and ten Scholars were sent up to King's. 3 At the election of the next year, one of the candidates for a Scholarship at Eton passed a satisfactory examination in Hebrew, "which was thought beyond precedent." This young prodigy — John Janeway — was then about thirteen years of age.t Janeway had scarcely left Eton when the Provost issued some " Rules for the Schollers," as follows : — " That they rise in the Long Chamber at five of the clocke in the morning, and, after a psalme sung and prayers used, sweepe the Chamber as they were formerly wont to doe. " That after supper they goe from the Hall to the Schoole, unless they be dismissed with leave and [be] then kept to- gether till eight of the clocke, at which tyme they are to repaire to the Long Chamber, and, after a psalme sung and prayers used, those that ly there not to stirre out, and those that ly in any other chambers immediately to repaire to them and not stirre out. '■ That those who canne write take notes of sermons, and those under the Master render them to him, and those under the Usher to him, the morning notes after dinner, the evening on Monday morning. " That they meete in the School on the Lord's day att ' Commons' Journals, vol. iv. p. 161. "Ibid, pp, 25s — 257; Lords' Journals, -vol. vii. p. 556. 3 Registrimi Regale. The Audit Book for 1649 — 1650 records pay- ments " for a long brush, broomes, and tobacco pipes for King's Col- ledge men in Election Weeke," and " for tobacco and pipes for the Pro- vost of King's his company.'' ■■ Janeway's Invisibles, Realities. RULES FOR THE SCHOLARS. 229 seaven of the clocke in the morning for prayer and catechizing to be performed by the Schoolemaster. " That when they have leave to play, the prepositors keepe them together in their bounds, except their tutors send for them to their chambers. " That none ly out of the Colledge, except they have leave from the Provost, or, in his absence, the Vice-Provost and Schoolemaster. " These rules I require to be observed. F. ROUS, Provost." ' Matters went on quietly enough at Eton for some time under Francis Rous ; though of course the Directory must have been substituted for the Book of Common Prayer. One of the oldest of the Fellows, Thomas Weaver, is said to have been in the habit of assembling the members of the disbanded choirs of Windsor and Eton in his rooms for an hour every morning, to perform some of the sacred m.usic, vocal and instrumental, to which they had been accustomed. The story goes that when Colonel Venn, then Governor of Windsor Castle, " once asked him why he could not be as well satisfied with the Psalms as they were sung in the Church as with this Popish music, the good old gentleman warily replied that he humbly conceived that God was as well pleased with being served in tune as out of tune ! " ^ In April 1644, the House of Commons ordered the Committee of Plundered Ministers "to consider of fit and able men to fill up the places of such Fellows of Eton College as have deserted their places, and have adhered to the forces raised against the Parliament," 3 but no steps were taken in the matter. The ordinance was subsequently revoked, and ' Additional MS. 11,692 f. 37- =^ MS. note in an old interleaved copy of Harwood's Alumni Eton- enses in the possession of the late Rev. G. J. Dupuis, Vice- Provost. 3 Commons' Journals, vol. iii, p. 456. 230 PURITAN FELLOWS. the Provost and Fellows received authority to conduct elections in the regular manner.' The legitimate Fellows were gradually ejected, and Puritans substituted for them. First among these latter was Joseph Symonds, who had abandoned a benefice in London, and fled the country in the days of Laud's power, but who, in 1647, was styled " an approved orthodox divine." ^ George Goad, another of the new Fellows, had a better right to his place, as having been educated at Eton, and as having been Head-Master for six months. A further step towards the destruction of the old collegiate system was taken at this time, by allowing commons to the Fellows in money instead of in kind.^ Thenceforth any Fellows who happened to be in residence took their meals in their private houses instead of in the College Hall. They continued to receive their beer from the brew-house, which seems to have enjoyed a good reputation in the seventeenth century. When the unfortunate King was confined as a prisoner in his own castle of Windsor, he was supplied with beer from Eton.* The fate which had so nearly overtaken the College under Edward IV., Henry VHL, and Edward VL, seemed imminent once more in 1649, when an ordinance was issued for the sale of the estates of various religious corporations. An exemption, however, was obtained, and the College was not molested.^ A few months later, the House of ' Lord^ Journals, vol. viii. p. 132. = Laud's Works, (ed. 1847) vol V p. 363 ; Commons' Journals, vol. V- P- 325- 3 Eton Audit Book, 1646 — 1647. ■* Ibid. 45 J. v^'as received "for 4 hogsheads of ordinary beere sent to Court when his Majesty was at Windsor." 5 Ibid. " In charges to the Vice Provost and Mr. Bateman riding to London in May last, to procure from the Parliament the sense of the House about a clause concerning Eton school in the ordinance for the sale of Deans and Prebends lands, 57/. 4s." " Item for an Act of Parliament for the CoUedge In- demnity in the sale of Deans and Prebends lands, 4/. lOj'.'' See also Commons' Jo?ir/ials, vol. vi. p. 219. JOHN HALES. 231 Commons resolved that the Fellows, Masters, and even the Scholars, in the Colleges of Eton, Winchester, and West- minster, should be compelled to subscribe the ' Engagement,' that they would be " true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords." ^ Two justices of the peace went to Eton for the purpose of receiving signatures to this document, and were entertained with wine and biscuit in the Vice-Provost's chamber, at the College expense.^ The new Fellows, of course, subscribed readily enough, but "the ever-memorable" John Hales absolutely refused to do so. He was a Royalist by conviction as well as by the force of sympathy. When the Puritans first came to Eton, Hales had concealed himself for nine weeks, lest they should obtain possession of certain documents and keys entrusted to him by the College. His hiding-place was so near at hand that he used to say that those who wei^e searching for him might have smelt him if he had eaten garlic. This was forgiven at the time ; but his refusal to subscribe the ' Engagement ' cost him his Fellowship. John Penwarn, who was appointed to succeed him, felt some scruples, and offered to share the income of the place with him ; an offer which Hales absolutely declined, saying, logically enough, that if he was entitled to any part, he was entitled to the whole. Hales first went to live with a Mrs. Salter, near Colnbrook, as tutor to her son, and he used there to perform the services of the Church of England for the benefit of the household, including Dr. King, the ejected Bishop of Chichester. Thence he returned to Eton, not indeed to his old rooms, but to a lodging, next to the ' Christopher ' Inn, kept by one of his former servants. There Aubrey paid him a visit : — " I saw him, a prettie little man, sanguine.^ of a chearful countenance, very gentele and courteous. I was received " Commons' Journals, vol. vi. p. I ' Eton Audit Book, 1649- 1650. ,Qy_ I 3 2>. ruddy. 232 JOHN HALES. by him with much humanity ; he was in a kind of violet- coloured cloath gowne with buttons and loopes (he wore not a black gowne), and was reading Thomas a Kempis. It was within a yeare before he deceased. He loved Canarie ; but moderately, to refresh his spirits." ' In the days of his prosperity. Hales used to declare that he had fifty pounds a year more than he cared to spend ; but the loss of his Fellowship at Eton and his Canonry at Windsor reduced him to a state of poverty. He was compelled to sell the principal portion of his library, which Clarendon describes as equal to any private collection in England in value, as well as in extent. He generously gave a portion of the proceeds to other deprived clergymen and scholars ; ° but he retained money enough for his own maintenance. The accounts of his extreme poverty in some of the old biographies are evidently exaggerated. A will, signed on the very day of his death,, proves that Hales still possessed some money as well as books. In this he gives instructions as to his funeral, which was " To be done in plain and simple manner, without any sermon, or ringing the bell, or calling the people together ; without any unseasonable commensation or compotation, or other solemnity on such occasions usual. And I strictly command my executrix, that neither of her own head, nor at the importunity or authority of any other, neither upon any other pretence whatsoever, to take upon her to dispense with this part of my will ; for as in my life I have done the Church no service, so will I not that in my death the Church doe me any honor." ^ Hales died on the i6th of May, 1656, aged seventy- two, and was buried according to his express desire in the church- yard of Eton instead of in the Church. The monument to his memory was erected by Peter Curwen, a former pupil. ' Letters of Eminent Persons, vol. ii. pp. 363—364. Biographia Britannica. 3 Eton Register, f. 70 (printed in Hales's Works and in Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary). NICHOLAS GRAY. 233 A fellow-sufferer with Hales was Nicholas Gray, who had been successively Head-Master of the Charter-House, of Merchant Taylors, and of Eton. He had lost the first of these appointments in consequence of his marriage, and now lost the last of them in consequence of his loyalty.' Shortly before his ejection, he had published for the use of the scholars at Eton an edition of a Catechism by Grotius entitled The Chapel from the South. " Baptizatorum Puerorum Institiitio" with a translation into Greek verse by his former pupil, Christopher Wase of King's College, and an English version by Francis Goldsmith. Gray's successor, George Goad, obtained a Fellowship at the end of six months. After him came Thomas Home, author of several school books, and father of two good scholars, one of whom became Master of Harrow, and the other Vice-Provost ' Wood's Athotce Oxouienses, vol. iii. p. 504. 234 FRANCIS ROUS. of Eton.' Gray was glad enough to obtain the Mastership of Tunbridge School, which Home resigned on his promotion to Eton.= Thomas Mountague, a friend of Hales, and the over- seer of his will, was allowed to retain his post as Usher until the Restoration, when he was made Head-Master. In 1653, Provost Rous received an accession of dignity which, though short-lived, has obtained for his name a place in the English history. When, in that year, Cromwell en- trusted the government of the nation to a body of his own nominees — the ' Bare-bones Parliament ' — the Provost of Eton, as one of the most respectable members, was appointed Speaker,^ and he continued to occupy the chair until the members of the Independent majority surrended to Cromwell the authority which they had received from him."* The Pro- tector afterwards rewarded the steady subservience of Rous, by a writ of summons to the Upper House,^ for he " could not well do less than make that gentleman a Lord who had made him a Prince." By the Royalist party Rous was perhaps more despised than feared. Clarendon describes him as en- joying a reputation for " some knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues, but of a very mean understanding, but thor- oughly engaged in the guilt of the times." ^ By others he was styled " the illiterate old Jew of Eton," in allusion to his desire to see the Mosaic system established in England.' His printed works hardly deserve so severe an epithet, though they now find few readers. The best known of them is a metrical trans- lation of the Psalms, which was printed by order of the House of Commons, and is still used in the Scottish Kirk. Provost Rous seems to have used the Election Hall for prayer-meetings,^ but of course there Was service in the Church ' 'WooA'sAthetta Oxome7%ses,\o\. iii. p. 366. ° Uid. p. 505. 3 White! ock's Memorials, p. 560. * Ibid. p. 570. 5 Ibid. p. 666. ^ History of the Rebellion, (ed. 1826) vol. vii. p. 15. ' 'Wood.'sAtke7ii2 Oxonienses,vo\. iii. p. 466 — 469. ' Eton Audit Book, 1649 — 1650. Seats were provided " for those that THE CHAPEL. 235 for the boys and the parishioners. Dr. Worthington, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, preached there frequently at this period.^ A small book was published in London in 1657, entitled — A Christian Calendar for children or youth, or an Essay of laying down and in, the principles of sound doctrine, by way of Catechism in 5 2 weeks, calculated for the Scholars of Eton Colledge (with their neighbours) by the present Catechist there. The Lectern, It was during the Puritan regime that the Collegiate Church came to be generally, though not invariably, called the " Chapel " ; and the Chaplains acquired the uncouth and some- what ignominious designation of " Conducts." ' The beautiful old brass lectern, which had escaped the destructive zeal of meet there to attend upon the re- peticon on the Lord's day." • Diary of John Worthington (Chetham Society), vol. i. pp. 30, 48, 50,84—86, 115, 189. " The Conducts are so called not because they conduct the service in church, but because, according to the statutes, they are '■' conductitii et remotivi," i.e. hired and remov- able. 236 THE PURITAN RULE. the early Reformers, was removed from the Church in 1650,' but it has been preserved uninjured. In the following year, the Arms of the Commonwealth were put up in the Church.'' The College authorities took every opportunity of displaying their antipathy to the Royalist party, even in the distribution of alms. Wayfarers in distress seldom received more than u- from them ; but " the poore widdow of a good minister formerly persecuted by Bishop Wren " got 2s. 6d.,^ and " a poor gentlewoman undone by the Cavaliers " got i/.'t The College voluntarily paid for the armour of two horsemen " for the use of the State." s Days of thanksgiving for the battle of Worcester and other triumphs were observed in the Hall.^ The College was so thoroughly leavened with Puritanism that it had little to fear from the commissioners appointed by Cromwell in September, 1654, to visit Eton as well as Cam- bridge, and to suggest alterations in the statutes.? Rous was a member of the commission, but he did not court enquiry, and little or nothing was done. His own claim to be styled Provost was certainly questionable ; yet he ever showed as warm an interest in the College as if he had been one of its legitimate members. He was the founder of three exhibitions at Pembroke College, Oxford, for Eton Scholars who had failed to obtain places at King's College, but which, in the absence of any such candidates, might be given to under- ' Eton Audit Book, 1649 — 1650. " For removing the brazen desk from the Chappell, 6d." " Ibid. 1650 — 1651. 3 Ibid. 1649 — 1650. " Ibid. 1652 — 1653. 5 Ibid. 1650 — 1 65 1. ' Ibid. " To Mr. Cox for several bottles of wine for the College use on a Thanksgiving day and for pipes and Tobacco sent for at several tymes for the use of the College"; Ibid. 1651 — 1652. "To the entertaynment of 8 strangers to dinner in the College Haul on the 24 of October 1651, being a thanks- giving day for the victory at Wor- cester, being over and above what every Fellow paid, 16s.'' ; Ibid. 1652 — 1653. "Strangers entertayned in the College Haul on the Thanks- giving Day, 3^. 6d." 1 Heywood and Wright's Cam- bridge University Transactions , vol. i, pp. xvii. — xxi. DEATH OF ROUS. 237 graduates of less than two years' standing who had been educated at Eton. It has often been stated that the fine old trees in the Play- ing Fields were planted by Rous ; but there does not appear to be any direct evidence to identify those now in existence with those planted during his tenure of the Provostship, rather than with any of the numerous other trees, which, as the audit- books prove, were planted there at different times in the seventeenth century. Provost Rous died at zVcton, on the 7th of January, 1659, four months later than his friend and patron, Oliver Cromwell' Bulstrode Whitelock, the historian, has fallen into a very singular error respecting this date. He writes : — "The Provost of Eton, Mr. Rouse, being dead, I had some thoughts, and was advised by some friends, to en- deavour to have the place of Provost, a thing of good value, quiet and honourable, and fit for a scholar, and I was not wholly incapable of it ; I therefore made application to his Highness concerning it, but found him engaged, or at least seeming to be so, for another ; my service was past, and therefore no necessity of a recompense, but this was reserved as bait for some others to be employed by his Highness." = The date of this entry is October 25, 1657 ; that is to say more than fourteen months before the death of Rous, who, as we have said, survived the Protector. This anachronism seems extraordinary in reference to a matter so nearly con- cerning the writer, and can only be explained by supposing that he wrote the word "dead" where he ought to have written "dangerously ill." Anyhow, the Memorials cannot have been revised very carefully, for Rous is brought to life again in the very next page as one of the new Peers. This Provost had left particular instructions that he should be buried at Eton—" a place which hath my deare affections and prayers, that it may be a flourishing nursery of pietie and ■ Biographia Britannica. | ' Whitelock's Memorials, p. 665. 238 JOHN OXENBRIDGE. learning to the end of the world." ' His body was accordingly- removed from Acton, and interred in Lupton's Chapel. The Church Register records the burial of " The Honourable Francis Lord Rouse," on the 25th of January. The Royalists tore down his banners soon after the Restoration, but his portrait still hangs in the dining-room of the Provost's Lodge. He is there represented in his robes as Speaker of the House of Commons, with the mace before him. The funeral sermon on Provost Rous was preached by John Oxenbridge, one of the Fellows,^ who had once been a tutor at Magdalen Hall, Oxford ; " But being found guilty of a strange and superstitious way of dealing with his scholars, by persuading and causing some of them to subscribe, as votaries, to several articles framed by himself, as he pretended, for their better govern- ment, as if the statutes of the place wherein he lived, and the authority of the then present government were not sufficient, he was distutor'd in the month of May 1634. Afterwards he left the Hall, and shewing himself very schismatical abroad, was forced to leave the nation ; where- upon he, with his beloved wife called Jane Butler, went to the islands of Bermudas, where he exercised his ministry. At length the long parliament making mad work in England in i64i,etc., he(as other schismatics did) returned, preached very enthusiastically in several places in his travels to and fro, while his dear wife preached in the house among her gossips and others." 3 On the death of the Puritan Vice-Provost, Symonds, John Oxenbridge obtained a Fellowship at Eton. Here he had the misfortune to lose his wife ; but, notwithstanding the expressions of his intense grief on her epitaph, he married again about six months later.* Wodd says that he married a third time, and that he was " composed of a strange hodg- • Will in the Court of Probate, London, Pell. f. 51. ° Wood's Athena Oxonienses, vol. iii. p. 468. ■' Ibid. p. 1027. * Sloane MS. 4843, ff. 359 — 361. NICHOLAS LOCKYER. 239 podg of opinions, not easily to be described ; was of a roving and rambling head, spent much, and, I think, died at last in a mean condition." John Oxenbridge was one of the Fellows who took part in the election of a new Provost, before the old Provost was even buried. In the absence of any strong central Government, they did not wait for a mandamus, and proceeded to elect one of their own number, Nicholas Lockyer, an Independent minister, formerly chaplain to Oliver Cromwell.' The Latin letter in which they acquainted " the most serene and most mighty Prince," the Protector Richard, of their choice, is curious as containing an explicit statement that they con- sidered him invested with the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Lincoln, and consequently their lawful Visitor. In other respects they were careful to observe the old forms as well as they could, and they did not attempt to omit the words BeatcB MaricB from the designation of the College.^ It mattered little what they did, for a period of anarchy had commenced, only to be terminated by the restoration of the Stuarts. ' Wood's AthencB Oxonienses, vol. iv. pp. 162 — 165. = Eton Register, vol. iii. f. 58. January 14, 1659. Silver Salt-cellar Given to the College by Nicholas Hobart, a.d. 1656. i66o— i68i. The Restoration — Nicholas Monk — New Fellows — Regulations as to Discipline — John Meredith — Robert Boyle and Edmund Waller — Richard Allestree — Financial Reform — The Upper School — Nathaniel Ingelo — Contests for Fellowships — School List of 1678. HEN the dissensions between the Rump Parlia- ment and the Council of Officers had rendered George Monk the arbiter of his country's des- tiny, two clergymen, one the General's brother, the other his chaplain, displayed great zeal on behalf of Prince Charles, for which they were subsequently rewarded with important posts at Eton. The former, Nicholas Monk, was Rector of Kilkhampton, a valuable living in Corn- wall, to which he had been presented by his kinsman. Sir John Granville, on the express understanding that he should do everything in his power to further the Royahst cause.' When, therefore, Grenville wished to commence negotiations with General Monk, who was in command of the army in Scotland, he selected Nicholas Monk to sound him as to his intentions. The accounts of the interview between the brothers differ in some respects, but agree in representing ' Wood's Athena Oxonienses, vol. iv. p. 815. THE RESTORATION. 241 the General as too cautious to commit himself in any way, while the drift of public opinion seemed so very uncertain. Although unsuccessful in the principal object of his mission, Nicholas Monk secured a valuable ally in the person of John Price, his brother's chaplain and intimate friend.' A few months later, when affairs had taken a decided turn in favour of the Stuarts, and Monk was established at West- minster with his army, John Price was selected by the new House of Commons to preach before them at St. Margaret's, on the loth of May, 1660 — the "Day of Thanksgiving to the Lord for raising up his Excellency the Lord General, and other eminent persons, who have been instrumental in the Delivery of this Nation from Thraldom and Misery."'^ Before the appointed day had arrived, Charles II. had been proclaimed King, and the preacher was free to manifest his sympathies without reserve. Naturally enough, he extolled his patron, and he proceeded to censure the Puritans, especially for their wanton destruction of painted glass :-^" A sad presage it was that those errors that could never have got in at our Church doors, should creep in at its broken windows." Price after- wards published a pamphlet entitled The Mystery and Method of His Majesty's happy Restoration. The new King was no sooner established at Whitehall, than petitions began to pour in from every side. Cavaliers, who had adhered faithfully to the Stuarts all through the civil wars and Commonwealth, now expected to receive ample rewards for their sufferings ; while men who had conformed reluctantly during those difficult times, were most anxious to be allowed to retain their posts. A conspicuous Puritan like Nicholas Lockyer could hardly hope for any favour from the new government, and he quietly resigned the Provostship of Eton, retiring on a private fortune, which sufficed to support him in ' Biographia Britannica; Moz- ley's Prince Arthur and Cm-dinal Morton (1878)- ' Parliamentary History, vol. iv. P- 13- R 242 THE RESTORATION. comfort for the rest of his days. He became a regular fre- quenter of conventicles, and continued so disaffected as to incur suspicion of being concerned in a treasonable conspiracy.' Several candidates applied for the Provostship, among whom were an officer in the army, and a disappointed Irish lawyer, both of whom probably thought more about its emoluments than its duties.^ Other claims would certainly have been sent in, if the King had not cut the matter short by appointing Nicholas Monk to the vacant post, on the recommendation of Sir John Grenville.s Instead of following one of the old forms, by recommending, or ordering, the Fellows to elect his nominee, Charles II. made an absolute grant of the Provostship, as if it had been an office in the gift of the Crown. Monk accordingly took possession of his new dignity without any sort of election ; but the Fellows, unwilling to allow these arbitrary proceedings to be quoted as precedents, withheld any allusion to them from the College Register. A certified copy of the King's letter, which bears date the 7th of July, 1660, exists in the Library at Eton. The majority of the Puritan Fellows followed Lockyer's example, three only of their number making any effort to avert the fate of expulsion which seemed to await them. One of these, John Boncle, drew up a plausible petition recounting his former services to the children of Charles I., and his exertions as Master at the Charter-House and at Eton.t This petition, however, was disregarded by the King's advisers, and Boncle had to content himself with the Mastership of the Mercers' School in London.^ The other two met with better success. Certain arbitrators, to whom George Goad's case was referred, pronounced his election valid on the score of its having taken ' Wood's Athena Oxonienses, vol. iv. p. 163. ' Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. i. no. 155 ; vol. iii. no. 59. ^ Wood's A thence Oxonienses, vol. iv. p. 815. •• Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. ix. no. 126. s Wood's Fasti Oxonienscs, vol. ii. p. 174. THE RESTORATION. 243 place a few months before the execution of Charles I. It is difficult to account for Ingelo's good fortune, except by ascrib- ing it to the influence of some powerful person at Court. Anyhow, he obtained a royal mandamus describing him as having been " very useful and serviceable " to the College. He was accordingly elected, or rather re-elected. Fellow, on the 1 2th of July, 1660.' Of the Fellows who had been ejected by the Puritans, two only — Stokes and Meredith^survived to resume their former places at Eton, and to take part in the election of the new members nominated by the King. General Monk had secured one of the vacant places for his chaplain, John Price, who, as an Etonian and Kingsman, was duly qualified ; while the others were bestowed on Isaac Barrow, and Nicholas Gray, the former Head-Master.^ The new Provost and Fellows lost no time in manifesting their antipathy to the late regime. They tore down the pre- tentious banners of the late ' Lord ' Rous from the walls of the Collegiate Church ; 3 and they defaced Andrew Marvell's epitaph on Jane Oxenbridge.* A similar policy led to the dismissal of Singleton from the position of Head-Master, not- withstanding his protests and entreaties. He was succeeded by Thomas Mountague, who, though inclined to the Royalist cause, had presided over the Lower School for many years under Rous and Lockyer.s The Book of Common Prayer was, of course, restored to its former use in the services of the Church ;^ and on the 13th of December 1660, it was formally resolved at a College meeting :— "That the houre of prayer be 10 of the clock in the morning and 4 of the clock in the afternoone, that com- ■ Eton Register, vol. iii. " Eton Register, f. 65. Strangely enough the mandamus for Barrow is directed to Monk, although dated three days before his appointment to the Provostship. "• Wood's Athence Oxonienscs, vol. iii. p. 468. * Ibid. p. 1028. ' Domestic' State Papers, Charles II. vol. vii. no. 109. '' Eton Audit Book. 244 DISCIPLINARY RULES. munion be at the three great festivalls, and Sunday at Michaelmas, and that Fellows, Conducts, Clerks and Schollers be in surplices Sunday after Candlemas day." ' The school plays, which had naturally found little favour with the Puritans, now met with every encouragement. The College authorities not only gave money to the scholars who took part in the comedy, but on at least one occasion hired a band of musicians to enliven the performance.^ But though thus favourably inclined to innocent amusements, the new Provost and Fellows did not lose sight of the real interests of the School, and, in the course of the first year after the Re- storation, they issued several regulations for the enforcement of stricter discipline than had prevailed of late. Thus it was ordered : — " That the Schoolemaster shall grant but one afternoone in a week for leave to play, and that only when there is no holyday in the week." 3 " That within a month after our Ladye's day next all the Kings Schollers and choristers shall ly in the Long Chamber, and that the Scholemaster and Usher shall lodge in their chambers at the ends of the Long Chamber, to prevent dis- orders which may otherwise happen in the said chamber." ♦ " That the statutes be read according to statute. " That the schollers and servants be sworne to the statutes so far as it concerns them. " That the Schoolemaster and Usher be put in mind to repaire to the Schoole, the Schoolemaster at 7 in the morn- ing and one in the afternoon, and the Usher soon after six and twelve. " That the Schoolemaster or Usher in writing times shall ' Eton Minute Book, December 13, 1660. = Eton Audit Book, 1659—1660. " Given to the musicians at the play by consent, i/."; Ibid. 1660 — 1661. " To Robert Woodward for a cord lent at the Comedy and lost, \s." ; Ibid. 1663 — 1664. "Given to the scholars by consent for acting their comedies last yeare, i/." 3 Eton Minute Book, December 19, 1660. " Ibid. March 18, 1661. DIET IN HALL. 245 take care that the schollers do not wander about but be held to a task, and therof to call for a daily accompt. " That speciall care be taken to prevent the disorders of the election week." ' With respect to their own emoluments and rights the authorities resolved : — " That the Provost's allowance, besides his wood, capons, twenty dozen of candles and twenty loads of hay, shall be five hundred pounds per annum : and that the allowance of each Fellow shall be one hundred and fifty pounds per annum to be payd quarterly by the Bursars." ^ " That what livings fall shall not be disposed till they be offerd and refusd by the Fellows in seniority, and if they all refuse, then every Fellow to have the refusall in seniority for his friend whom he will commend." 3 The high table, which had stood idle for some time, was again brought into use. It was " Agreed that there shall be a Diet in the College Hall at Dinner only, to begin at Lady-day next, the expense for a yeare to be 160" ; the Quiristers to serve and have their allowance of bread and beer at dinner and their commons at supper : that the 160" be payd by the Fellowes and Schoolm'aster out of their dues at 20" per annum each ; and that any Fellow present and Schoolmaster present shall have a loafe of bread and a pott of beere, and that every Fellow which brings in his friends shall pay for his bread and beer, except it be a Tenant." * The ordinances of the Church were strictly observed at this table as well as at the lower tables. With regard to the latter it was ordered : — " That the schollers shall have threpence a mess dinner, and supper through the whole Lent as allso all fasting daies through the yea're."s ' Eton Minute Book, June 21, 3 Ibid. December 13, 1660. 1661. •* ^'^'■^• ^ Ibid. March 18, 166 1. = Ibid. February 8, 166 1. 246 DEATH OF MONK. In connexion with these fasts we may notice the order : — " That there be a boat with a tilt and a trunke to keepe fish for the Colledge use." ' A few months after the Restoration, it was found necessary to fill up the numerous vacancies on the episcopal bench, and Dr. Monk was appointed Bishop of Hereford. Rumour said that he was to be succeeded at Eton by Edmund Calamy, the eminent Nonconformist, but the arrangement actually made was that he should not resign the Provostship until he had occupied his see for two years.'' He did not live long enough to reap much advantage from his commendam, as he fell ill, and died at his lodgings in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, on the 17th of December, 1661, in the first year of his episcopate. He was buried in the neighbouring Abbey, his brother George, Duke of Albemarle, attending as chief mourner.3 The reversion of the Provostship had several months previously been granted to Dr. Thomas Browne, Canon of Windsor, and late chaplain to the Princess of Orange,* and he now lost no time in procuring a confirmation of the King's letter in his favour. A new mandamus was accordingly issued two days after Bishop Monk's death, and actually before the funeral, ordering the immediate election of Browne, although he had not been a member of either of Henry VI.'s foundations. s It did not find the Fellows in a very submissive mood. They did not, indeed, venture to bring forward any other candidate, but they had the unusual boldness to disobey the royal commands by not holding any election whatever. Whether they refused ' Eton Minute Book, May 20, 1661. = Fifth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, p. 145 ; Domes- tic State Papers, Charles II. vol. xx.xi.x. no. 67. 3 Wood's Athence Oxonienses, vol. iv. p. 816. * Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. xxxix. no. 67. ' tbid. vol. xlv. no. 75. JOHN MEREDITH. 247 to acknowledge the validity of the dispensation, or whether they raised any other objection to Browne, is not clear ; but they certainly carried their point. Two months later, the King, acknowledging that he had " received fuller inform- ation," was obliged to revoke his former letters, and to desire the Fellows to elect one of their own body. Dr. John Meredith, " who, by his eminent work and constant affection to us and our interest, hath very well deserved this character of our royal favour." This order met with ready obedience,' a proof that the Fellows were not attempting to secure the absolutely free right of election accorded to them by the Founder. Meredith was at this time Warden of All Souls, and he continued to preside over both Colleges until his death. His brief tenure of the Provostship is remarkable only for further attempts to enforce discipline. It was " Ordred by Mr. Provost and the Fellowes that the schollars shall not goe out of their bounds day or night without leave of the Provost or Vice-Provost, upon payne of admonition and being registred for the first fault, and. for the second fault to be admonished and registred the second time and severely punished : and for the third fault to be expelled from the College. " Ordred then that the publique dores of the Schoole and Longe Chamber shalbe secured by new locks, and that the keys of all those dores be taken evry night imediatly after prayers, and that those schollers whoe shall goe out of the Schoole or College any evening without leave of the Provost or Vice-Provost shalbe admonished and registred for the first fault, and severly punished and registred for the second fault, and for the- third expelled. " It was ordred alsoe that if any schollar doe presume to ly out of the College one night without leave of the ■ Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. li. no. 24 ; Eton Register 248 DISCIPLINARY RULES. Provost or Vice-Provost he shalbe whipt and registred for the first fault, and for the second he shalbe expelled. " It was ordred then also that Clark, Stone, Curwin, and Whittaker, whoe lately accompanied Garaway and Langston at the ' Christopher ' and Thomas Woodward's, shall have a forme of repentance drawne for them which they shall read in the School before the Vice-Provost and Fellowes in English, and that their fault of being out of their bounds shalbe registred pro prima vice'.' A little later, viz. on the 2nd of April, 1666, there is a " Memorandum that Curwin and Baker were admonished and whipt and registred for goeing out of their bounds to the Datchet ale-houses and beating the fishermen in their way home, to the great scandal of the College. Curwin for the second time, and Baker for the first." ' Curwin must have been old enough to know better, if he is identical with the scholar of that name who was elected to King's in that same year. Such offences as his would meet with similar punishment now ; but the rules respecting smoking have changed since that time. Tobacco was then considered an excellent preservative against the plague, which committed dreadful ravages in the reign of Charles II. ; and the Eton boys were ordered to smoke in school daily. Tom Rogers told Hearne "that he was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not smoaking." ^ John Meredith died in July 1665, and was buried in the Chapel of All Souls' College, where an epitaph describes him as a man of courteous though old-fashioned manners.^ The King at once offered the Provostship to Robert Boyle, an offer which reflected honour on both. Boyle, having been educated at Eton, was already familiar with the customs ' Eton Election Register, vol. i. ! ^ '■' Blandis moribus quaiiquam Hearne's Diary, (ed. 1869) vol. ii. p. 120. et antlquisi' BOYLE AND WALLER. 249 and traditions of the School, and he possessed private means which would have prevented him from looking upon the Provostship as a mere source of income. But he was aware that the statutes required the Provost to be a priest, and the idea of a dispensation was repugnant to his mind. He might, it is true, have overcome the difficulty, by following the example of Sir Henry Wotton in taking holy orders, and this course was urged upon him by his friends, who knew him to be the author of several religious treatises, and a man of virtuous life. Boyle, however, felt that his works commanded more attention as coming from a layman, than they would otherwise have done, and he was anxious to prove to the world by his example, that the study of theology was not exclusively the province of the clergy. Thus the very qualifications which in the eyes of others made him so well fitted to become a clergyman, deterred him from seeking ordination. As these conscientious scruples were enhanced by a reluctance to undertake any official duties which would interfere with the study of philosophy, he gave a positive refusal to the King's unexpected offer.' Boyle's conduct at this juncture appears all the more creditable when contrasted with that of Edmund Waller, who owes his place among eminent Etonians to his talents rather than to his virtues. This poet, whose venal odes had successively resounded the praises of Charles L, of Cromwell, and of Charles H., was now in high favour with this last monarch, and easily obtained from him a promise of the Provostship of his old school. The necessary documents were prepared, and Waller was congratulating himself on his success, when an unforeseen obstacle arose. Clarendon, who was then Lord Chancellor, absolutely refused to affix the Great Seal to the King's mandamus^ declaring that the office could not be filled by a layman. Waller ' Biographia Britatmica. 2SO RICHARD ALLESTREE. was bitterly disappointed at the time, and he afterwards gratified his revenge by joining in the prosecution of Clarendon with great virulence. The Provostship was next offered to Dr. Richard Allestree, who accepted it, and was duly elected on the 8th of August, 1665.^ In this instance Clarendon did not insist upon an entire obedience to the statutes, for the new Provost did not possess all the qualifications which they require, never having been connected with either of the Colleges founded by Henry VI. The Chancellor was doubtless glad to be able to bestow this reward on one who had rendered loyal service to Charles I. and Charles II. Allestree was a student at Christ Church at the out- break of the civil war, and he twice contrived to outwit a band of Parliamentarians by means of a private key. " Some of the rebels, having attempted to break into the treasury of Christ Church, and after a day's labour having forced a passage into it, met with nothing but a groat and a halter, at the bottom of a large iron chest. Enraged at their disappointment, they went to the Deanery, where having plundered as much as they thought fit, they put it all together in a chamber, and retired to their quarters, intending the next day to return and dispose of their prize. But when they came, they found themselves again disappointed, and everything removed out of the chamber." After this, Allestree fought at Edgehill, and served in the King's army during the siege of Oxford, "frequently holding his musket in one hand and book in the other, and making the watchings of a soldier the lucubrations of a student." When the Parliamentary visitors came to Christ Church, they ejected him from his place, " because," as one of them said, "he was an eminent man." After the battle of Worcester, Allestree became the bearer of various com- " Biographia Briiannica. \ ° Eton Register. RICHARD ALLESTREE. 251 munications between the Royalists in England and the exiled Court, but, being detected, he was committed to prison, from which he was not released until the restoration of the Stuarts seemed certain. He was thereupon appointed Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.' The Provostship of Eton was the highest dignity to which he ever attained,'' though his epitaph implies that he might have beeq a bishop if he had so chosen.3 AUestree proved to be one of the best Provosts that Eton has ever had. Although he did not attain a reputation in literature or politics equal to that of several of his predecessors, he was second to none of them in administrative ability. On assuming the government of the College, he found its fin- ances in a very critical condition. The Puritan Fellows had introduced a custom of charging all extraordinary expenses to capital, and dividing the surplus income of each year among themselves. The debt thus contracted was drawing ' Biographia Britannica ; Fell's Life of AUestree. ' An Eton tradition says that AUestree had been forgotten at Court, and that he only owed this preferment to a ridiculous incident. A party of Cavaliers are said to have been discussing the personal appearance of the Earl of Lauder- dale, when the merry monarch defied any of them to produce an uglier man in the course of half-an- hour. Lord Rochester accepted the challenge, and went out into the streets to try his luck. After carefully scrutinising all the passers- by, he accosted a shabbily dressed clergyman of singularly unfortunate looks. This was Richard AUestree, whom he inveigled into the King's presence, where their entrance was greeted by the revellers with peals of laughter. When the=c had sub- sided, the King acknowledged that he had lost his bet, and then turn- ing to the bewildered clergyman, explained the joke, and apologised for its rudeness. AUestree made good use of the occasion by obtain- ing a promise of promotion, which was not forgotten when the Provost- ship of Eton fell vacant. This story is related at greater length in ]es%e'i Favotirite Haunts, pp. 140 — 14s ; but it does not appear in any of the old biogra- phies of AUestree, and the dates of his successive preferments prove that his services were never over- looked. " Episcopales infidas eadem indtcstria evitavit, qua alii ain- biunt ; cui rectius visum, Ecdesiam defendere, instrucre, ornare, quam regere^' 252 UPPER SCHOOL. interest so heavy that in the year 1665 the College was said, perhaps somewhat hyperbolically, to be on the verge of insolvency. The new Provost resolved to remove any possi- bility of such a catastrophe, by giving up some of his own dues, and persuading the Fellows to do likewise. His bio- grapher boasts that, by this means, " within a few years the College paid off a thousand pound debt, and expended above two thousand pounds in repairs." ' Allestree gave a further proof of his generosity when he undertook a considerable addition to the College buildings at his own expense. "^ The views of Eton which appear on Sir Henry Savile's monument, 3 and on the title-page of his edition of St Chrysostom, show that the School Yard was in his time enclosed by buildings on three sides only. It was, in fact, separated from the high road on the west merely by a low wall, having an entrance in the centre opposite to the Provost's Lodge." Allestree was the first to complete the quadrangle by connecting the ' ante-chapel ' with the tower at the end of the Long Chamber. The building which he erected consisted of a long schoolroom on the upper floor, with smaller rooms and a colonnade below it. Such additional ac- commodation had become necessary, as the old schoolroom was quite inadequate to contain the ever-increasing number of Oppidans. The new building was badly constructed, and it had to be pulled down within a few years of its erection : the present Upper School occupies its site, and greatly resembles it in ' Fell's Life of Allestree. ' Ibid, and Epitaph at Eton. 3 See the plate in Tighe and Davis's Annals of Windsor, vol. i. P- 327- * The School Yard was anciently accounted part of the Churchyard. (WiUis and Clark, vol. i. p. 463.) In 1491, John Towning directed by will that his corpse should be buried in the cemetery of the Collegiate Church of Eton, before the north door of the said church ; and, in 1503, John Rawson expressed his wish to be buried " without the northe dore of our Lady Chyrche in the chyrcheyerd, as ny to the dore as may be." Eton Register, vol. i. ff. 122, 130. NATHANIEL INGELO. 253 design. An important difference between the two is, however, to be found in the eastern side, where substantial piers carry- ing arches have been substituted for Allestree's detached columns and continuous lintel. The earlier building had a higher pitched roof than the present building, but no balus- trade crowning the walls. ' Bishop Fell writes in warm terms of Provost Allestree's social influence at Eton, saying that while he lived there it " was but as one family, his lodging being every Fellow's chamber, and they as much at home with him as in their own apart- ment.'' The duties of the chair of Divinity however, compelled Allestree to reside chiefly at Oxford, so that he used to spend only about two months of the year at Eton, at the times of the election and the audit respectively.^ During his absense, the College affairs were generally administered by Nathaniel Ingelo, or by Zachary Cradock. The former of these seems to have retained his old Puritanical views, and to have made himself extremely unpopular. Soon after his re- election to a Fellowship in 1660, an attempt had been made to eject him from it, by a certain Captain Francis Robinson, of the Life Guards, who, in a deposition before Sir Edward Nicholas, raked up charges extending as far back as 1644. The accusations against Ingelo were, first, that he was at one time in the habit of- disturbing the Church service at Wymondham by " most insolent stamping with his feet, and knocking against the seeling," 3 and by scoffing at the Book of Common Prayer as containing "conjuration." " 2, Hee said the Bishops were a company of Rogues and Popish prists, and that they ought all to be hanged if they ware rightly served. 3, He the said Angelow said that his Majistie of blessed memory was a Papist in his harte." ■ Allestree's Upper School is re- reduced copy is here given from presented in Dugdale's Monasticon, Wilhs and Clark, vol. i. (ed. 1673) p. 195, and in Loggan's " Sloane MS. 4839, f. 79. eno-raved view of Eton, of which a ' i.e. panelling. 2 54 NATHANIEL INGELO. He was said to have applied far more offensive names to Queen Henrietta Maria, and to have stigmatised her children as bastards.' Some years later, the scholars of Eton were bold enough to apply to the Bishop of Lincoln for protection against Ingelo, who, as Vice-Provost, used to interfere with them continually. They complained of the " Tyranny and inhuman proceedings which he lately manifested in expelling a poore Cavalier's sonne, Mr. Hill the watchmaker's sonne, who was one of the upper schollars in our schoole, and one that had had a place at Oxford ere this, and been made for ever, had he not been expelled the Colledge so infortunately to all his friends and especially to his parents' trouble, who being burnt out of their houses by the fire had been almost undone by it. His fault was not soe greate as to despaire of pardon. It was only that with some friends he went to Oxford without asking leave, for which fault Dr. Ingelo, although the Provost had pardoned him, and he promised Dr. Mew that he should not be turned out, did contrary to his promise forbidd him to come near the College, and bid the College servants lay hold on him and punish him publiquely, if he came within the College bounds, and by this he hath utterly undone him. And soe he would have undone another Cavalier's sonne Esq. Harrison's sonne for nothing as is now known. Wee all wish to be eased of the yoake that we undergoe by the meanes of this Ingelo ; for which wee most humbly beseech your Lordshipp to looke upon us condemned to undergoe an unspeakable tyranny except wee have a reprieve from your hands." ^ William Otes, one of the Conducts, carried complaints against Ingelo to a still higher authority, the Archbishop of Canterbury. . He openly charged the Vice-Provost with persecuting him on account of his zeal for the Church of ' Do?nestic State Papers, Ch&vl&s [ " Tanner MS. 158, f. 17. II. vol. X. no. 1 19. I FELLO WSHIPS. = 55 England, as well as for his adherence to the Duke of York's party. This quarrel commenced in 1682, and it was only terminated by the death of Ingelo three years later. ' The keen competition for Fellowships, already noticed at the period of the Restoration, continued almost throughout the reign of Charles II. Sir John Grenville was not satisfied with having procured the Provostship for his kinsman Nicholas Monk, and applied to the King for a Fellowship for his own brother. The vacancy caused by the death of Gray having just been filled up,"" it was arranged that Dennis Grenville- should have the next. But, though the letter in his favour was confirmed sixteen months later, the Fellowship which Meredith resigned on his promotion to the Provostship was granted by the forgetful King to Dr. Heaver of Windsor.s The Grenvilles were naturally indignant at such treatment, and the King had to write to the Provost and Fellows, ex- plaining that the late appointment had been made in conse- quence of Laud's decree of 1634, which annexed a Fellowship at Eton to the Vicarage of Windsor, and once more bidding them reserve the next place for Grenville, whose family had rendered such eminent services to the Royalist cause.** It was thought desirable to encourage men of good family to take holy orders, by bestowing on them suitable ecclesiastical benefices.^ Isaac Barrow was expressly permitted to hold his Fellow- ship together with the see of Sodor and Man,^ so that no vacancy occurred until the death of David Stokes in 1669. Dennis Grenville had, some years before this, exchanged his reversion for a prebend in the north of England with a certain Timothy Thriscrosse,^ but' the latter had considerable ' Tanner MS. 4841, ff. 293—303. =' Eton Register. 3 Ibid. J Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. li. no. 48. ■> Sloatte MS. 4840, ff. 226, 227. 5 Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. Ix. no. 50. * Ibid. no. 47 ; Eton Register, vol. iv. f. 10. ' Domestic State Papers, Chailes II., vol. Ix. no. 49. 256 FELLO WSHIPS. difficulty in maintaining his rights. Notwithstanding the definite mandamus in favour of Thriscrosse, Lord ArHngton managed to procure a promise of the next Fellowship for his own chaplain, Henry Bold of Christ Church,' and he lost no time in obtaining a confirmation of it when the vacancy did occur. Thriscrosse too had influence at Court, and in turn succeeded in persuading the Kmg to revoke this latest order. It availed him little, however, for the letter in his favour did not reach Eton until after the Provost and Fellows had completed the election of Bold.^ He was more fortunate in the following year. The inconvenience and scandal caused by such con- tradictory orders from Whitehall, were doubtless the reasons which induced Allestree, himself an Oxonian, to beg for a confirmation of Laud's decree, by which five of the Eton Fellowships were to be reserved for members of King's College, Cambridge.3 This was granted in 1670, but the order was violated on the first two occasions, when Zachary Cradock of Queen's College Cambridge, and Henry Godolphin of All Souls' College, Oxford, both afterwards Provosts, were respectively elected Fellows.* The Kingsmen could hardly witness in silence so glaring an invasion of their privileges, and they accordingly drew up a remonstrance and petition, urging that the order so recently confirmed should for the future be faithfully obeyed. Their cause was warmly espoused by Archbishop Sancroft, who procured the King's signature to a stronger confirmation of the neglected decree, bidding the electors of Eton disregard any past or future mandatory letters contrary to the same.s A petition from the inhabitants of Windsor in favour of their Vicar, met with an unfavourable reception at the hands of the Archbishop.* ' Wood's Fasti Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 278. = Sloane MS. 4840, f. 227. 3 Fell's Life of Allestree. ■* Eton Register, vol. iv. 5 Sloane MS. 4842, ff. 240- 281. ' Ibid. 4841, f. 328. -242, DIET IN HALL. 257 An attempt was made in 1662 to enforce among the Fellows the celibacy enjoined by the statutes ; ' but the royal letter to that effect was soon disregarded, if indeed it was not revoked, and the Fellows of Eton have accordingly enjoyed ever since a liberty only lately conceded to the Fellows of Colleges at the Universities. The high table in Hall, re-established in 1665, was maintained for several years. The following entry occurs in the minute-book under the date of the 4th of January 1676 : — " It is agreed that the allowance for the Fellows' Commons shall not exceed in the whole year sixteen pounds of beef or mutton for every day and four shillings for the second dish. And that the beef or mutton shall not be changed for other meat but upon fasting days, and then the value of it to be layd out in providing something els ... . and that no meat be sent from the table." Among the visitors to the College at this period was Samuel Pepys, whose remarks on the Bacchus verses have already been quoted.^ He also noticed the time-honoured custom " of boys cutting their names in the shuts of the window, when they go to Cambridge, by which many a one hath lived to see himself a Provost and Fellow, that hath his name in the window yet standing." ^ When Pepys went to see Winchester College he cared for little except his dinner,* and the same spirit is observable in his warm praise of the beer at. Eton.s He was not the only person who appreciated its excellence, for Charles H. and Prince Rupert used to partake of it regularly when staying at Windsor.* ' Domestic State Papers, Charles II. vol. Ixv. nos. 43— 4S- " Page 141- 3 The earliest date which has been noticed is 1528, but the regular series does not begin till 1564. After 1645, the names were cut on the pillars, the space on the shutters having been filled. ■t Diary, August i, 1683. s Ibid. February 26, 1666. ^ Eton Audit Book, 1669 — 1670. " Received of the King's Butler for 8 hogsheads of beer, 9^-. the hogs- S 2S8 SCHOOL-LIST OF 1678. The earliest School-list extant belongs to the year 1678, and gives the names of 207 boys, five of whom, however, do not appear to have been actually at Eton at the time. Out of this total, seventy-eight were Collegers, including the eight who composed the sixth form, but five of these went up to King's in that year. No distinction is made between an Upper and a Lower School ; but in each of the forms, except the highest, a separation is made between the Collegers and the " Oppidanes." The first form was quite empty, unless it in- cluded the "Bibler's seat," which had one occupant. The names of an earl's eldest son, and of no less than five young baronets, indicate that the School was in high favour with the upper class of society. We may observe that the system by which two or more boys of one family were distinguished from one another had been altered since the reign of Charles I. In the lists of Commensals in the audit-books of that time the eldest brother was always styled a, the second i, and the third minor. In 1678 we find the more consistent suffixes oi major, m.inor, and minimus.^ According to modern usage at Eton, the arrival of a fourth brother converts the former major into maxinms, the minor into m.ajor, and the minimus into minor. There have been several instances of a quintus, and at least one of a Septimus. The list of 1678 does not give the names of any masters, but it is known otherwise that John Rosewell was Head-Master at that time. Under his care the School increased greatly in reputation ; and " then it was that the foundation of its present grandeur was laid," says an old writer,^ who could never have anticipated that it would one day consist of more than 950 boys. head, 3/. 12s. ;" Ibid. 1674 — 1675. " Prince Rupert one hogshead of hesr, i^s. ;' Ibid. 1676 — 1677. "5 hogshead of beer for the King." ' Rawlinson MS. B. 266, f. 14.6. = Ibid. B. 265, f. 78. i68i— 1728. Zachary Cradock — Charles Roderick — John Newborough — The new Upper School — Hunting the Ram — Henry Godolphin — Alterations in the Church — Andrew Snape — Henry Bland — Edward Littleton- William Pitt. ROVOST ALLESTREE died in January 1681, and as the scrupulous Lord Clarendon was then no longer in power, Edmund Waller felt em- boldened to make another application for the post he had so long coveted. The Fellows, however, raised objections to him, and Charles II. was wise enough to refer the case to the Privy Council, who, after hear- ing it argued by lawyers for three days, declared that the Provostship involved a cure of souls, and consequently could not be held by a layman, under the Act of Uniformity.' The King explained to Waller that he could not break the law which he himself had made,^ and proceeded to issue a letter in favour of Zachary Cradock, a clergyman who, although an alien, had been a Fellow of Eton for upwards of nine years.3 The new Provost had little to recommend him in point of political connexion or social position, as one of' his brothers was ■ Tanner MS. 158, ff. 3—5. I ^ Eton Register, vol. iv. ff. 28, = Biographia Dritannica, vol. vi. I 37. p. 41 1 1- ' S 2 26o JOHN ROSE WELL. a Nonconformist minister, and another a grocer. His whole reputation rested on his eloquence in the pulpit, where he used always to speak extempore, though he was so far from being vain of this accomplishment, that he would sometimes put on his spectacles and spread out on the cushion before him a note- book which really contained nothing but blank leaves." The King was much pleased with a sermon of his on Providence, and ordered it to be printed. The little pamphlet was ironically called the " Works of Dr. Cradock," as if it had been one of the voluminous publications then in vogue.^ A little more than a year after Cradock's appointment to the Provostship, John Rosewell resigned the post of Head- Master somewhat abruptly. Rumour said that he had caused the death of a boy by immoderate flogging, and that he had consequently fallen into a state of melancholy madness, fancy- ing that the King's messengers were coming to arrest him for treason, and refusing to stir out of doors.3 The truth of this rumour is doubtful, for we find that he was recalled to Eton as a Fellow, a few months later. Rosewell was succeeded in the management of the School by Charles Roderick, a Kingsman, who had been Usher under him for about six years, and who is said to have proved himself an excellent master. "He had no fault except there be A fault in too much modesty. For tho' none wrote with greater ease, Tho' he ne'er spoke but sure to please, Yet none so cautiously withdrew From pulpits and the public view." 4 Cole notes that he " had not the courage to preach one sermon, tho' he composed not a few." 5 Roderick allowed six of his pupils to be touched for the ' Lansdowne MS. 987, f. 117. " Biographia Britannica, vol. vi. p. 41 1 1. 3 Lansdowne MS. 987, f. 39. ' Col^s MS. vol. xvi. ff. 20—23. 5 Tbid. AN ELECTION A T KING'S. 261 king's-evil at Eton on the 7th of September, 1686, with other parishioners, but when James II. again went through the cere- mony there, just two years later, none of the scholars required the exercise of his reputed power.' The circumstances which induced Charles Roderick to resign the Head-Mastership of Eton occupy an important place in the history of the sister college at Cambridge, and a short account of them may not be altogether out of place here. It appears that on the death, in 16S9, of John Coplestone, Provost of King's, the Fellows determined to recover their right of free election, which had been ignored alike by the kings of the houses of Tudor and Stuart, and by the Long Parliament. The Revolution of the previous year had some- what impaired the force of the royal prerogative, and they might have accomplished their object quietly and satisfactorily if one of their own number, named Hartcliff, had not posted off to the Court in haste, to protest that the right of nomina- tion lay with the King. If the real motive of this "false brother," as they styled him, was to secure the place for him- self, he was disappointed, for a mandamus ^zs forthwith issued in favour of Stephen Upman, Fellow of Eton. The Kingsmen, however, asserted their own claims boldly, and refused to elect their royal master's nominee, at the same time taking care to remind the Whig Government that Upman had been a sup- porter of James II., and had preached at Eton in favour of the illegal Declaration for Liberty of Conscience. This last shaft hit the mark ; the mandamus was revoked, and a new one was issued in favour of Sir Isaac Newton, the University's own representative in Parliament. The Fellows were not to be propitiated in this manner, and they formally protested against Newton as an alien. The Government again gave way, and a third mandamus was sent down to Cambridge, requiring the Fellows to elect the traitor Hartcliff, who certainly had the ' Sloane MS. 4843, f. 396. I and George Cecil, sons of Lord Among the patients were Charles I Exeter. 262 CHARLES RODERICK. proper qualifications. " But of this the College being aware, every officer took care to be out of the way, every Fellow's door was shut, and no one at home, so that when the messenger came, finding no one to deliver the mandamus to, he laid it on the hall table, from whence, at night, by an unknown hand, it was thrown over the wall." The day of election came on before the Government had time to take any further steps in the matter, and the Head-Master of Eton obtained all the votes except three, of which Hartcliff's was one. In thus choosing Charles Roderick, the Fellows were more headstrong than con- sistent ; for he was in reality unqualified, being neither a priest nor a Doctor, as required by the statutes. " But this was soon rectified, for the University, at the intercession of the College, immediately gave him a Doctor's degree, for which he was to perform his exercises in the following term ; and the Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Sprat, gave him private ordination at Westminster, assisted by Dr. Annsley, Dean of Exeter, and Prebendary of Westminster And then, to defend themselves in case of a lawsuit, with which they were threatened, the society passed a vote that there should be no dividend till the lawsuit was at an end, and if that should not be sufficient, next to convert all the College plate into money for the same use, and lastly, if more were still wanting, to strike off the second dish for a time. At the same time they applied to all the men of quality then living that had been bred at King's College, craving their aid to enable them to carry on the lawsuit ; in which they met with good success, Lord Dartmouth alone, the College's Lord High Steward, subscribing a thousand pounds towards sup- porting the lawsuit. However, they thought it most prudent to prevent a lawsuit if they could, and therefore used their utmost endeavours to pacify the Court, and reconcile them, if possible, to their election. By the interest of their friends they prevailed so far as to obtain a hearing, which was appointed to be at Hampton Court." KING'S COLLEGE. 263 The College sent up three of its members to argue the case against the law-officers of the Crown, who of course pleaded the long-established practice of the King's predecessors. The discusion was waxing warm, when there was a sudden hush and a whisper that the Queen was coming through the gallery. One of the Kingsmen, named Layton, being rather deaf, and very blind, did not perceive this, and at the critical moment struck the table with his fist and cried out in a loud voice : — " Mr. Attorney- General, if we must bear the grievances of former reigns, then is the King in vain come in." Queen Mary was naturally startled at such plainness of speech. The interview was brought to a close amid threats on one side, and words of defiance on the other, but the King eventually signified his approval of Roderick.' From that time forth the Kingsmen have elected their own Provost, and in every instance, save one, they have made choice of an Eton master. One of the deputations to William III. in favour of the presumptuous Kingsmen was attended by John Newborough, the Usher of Eton School, who can hardly have been disinterested in the matter, as Roderick's removal brought about his own promotion to the office of Head-Master. A glowing eulogy of Newborough forms the specimen page of Richard Rawlinson's projected History of Eton. We there read : — " He was of a graceful person and comely aspect ; had a presence' fit to awe the numerous tribe over which he presided ; grave was he in his behaviour, and irreproachable in his life ; very pathetical were his reproofs, and dis- passionate his corrections ; and when any hopes of amendment appeared, he declined severe remedies. He always chose, in the places to which as master he had a right of collation, those youths whose industry, modesty, and good behaviour rendered them remarkable, and that ' Cole's MS. vol. xvi. ff. 19—20, 37—39. 264 JOHN NEWBOROVGH. so far from being moved by their parents' and friends application made to him, that even without their knowledge he frequently conferred his place on them. Careful was he, to the greatest exactness and rigidness imaginable, of the morals of the youths committed to his charge ; nor in the common school exercises was a light airy wit so much aimed at as good sound sense and grave reflections Exceeding happy was he in his expression ; his words flowing from him just though swift, and always inimitably expressive. The jejune and insipid explications of the common rank of commentators he held in the highest contempt, while he himself, with a delightful copia verborum struck out something very uncommon, something surprising. Terence's vis comica received new graces from his mouth, and Roscius then triumphed indeed when Newborough explained. Was Livy to be read ? Who ever fathomed, or rather found, his depths like him whose soul was equally noble, equally sublime with his author ? . . . Generous and hospitable was he, and knew as gracefully how to dispose of his money as how to receive it. To the poorer lads on the foundation he was known to be very noble in supplying them with the proper books and other necessaries, and that in good quantity ; being rightly apprised that the quickest natural parts and the most promising genius might be cramped by the res angusta domi." ' A small book entitled " Epigrammatum Delectus ", printed for the fourth time in 1689, is expressly stated to have been Jjz usum Scholm Etonensis. Martial predominates in it, but the compiler was not exclusive in his views, and found room for several productions of modern Latinists, as Sannazaro, Strozzi, Strada, Beza, Grotius, John Owen, Buchanan, and others. Another portion of the book consists of choice quotations from classical poets, and it ends with a collection of short Greek sentences accompanied by Latin translations. ' Sloane MS. 4843, ff. 263—264. JOHN NEWBOROUGH. 265 Very different to this must have been the books which New- borough used to give " to all young gentlemen who took their leave of him handsomely" — the earliest notice of the objection- able system of " leaving money." Newborough's enthusiastic discourses on the glories of ancient Greece and Rome gave rise to a suspicion that he wished to inculcate Republican principles ; but it so turned out that two of his pupils, St. John and Wyndham, became no less distinguished among the Tories, than two others, Walpole and Townshend, among the Whigs. He had a clear perception of talent in young men, and on being told of St. John's early success in the House of Commons, he said : — " I am impatient to hear that Robert Walpole has spoken, for I am convinced that he will be a good orator." ' So flourishing was the condition of the School under Newborough that the composer of his epitaph did not hesitate to speak of him as "■ Etonensis scholcB, terrarum orbis per ipsum maxiincB, magistri." ^ Newborough was a contributor to the fund raised in 1689 for rebuilding the Upper School, on the western side of the great quadrangle at Eton.^ The necessity for this rebuilding arose from the faulty construction of Provost Allestree's work, which fell out of the perpendicular, and became actually dangerous a very few years after his death. A legacy of 300/. from Dr. Rosewell "for the use and benefit of Eton College School " came in most opportunely, and more than 500/. was contributed by the College and its principal mem- bers. An appeal for assistance was then issued to old Etonians and the general public, explaining the proposed alterations. " It is thought necessary by the College, upon the best advice they could get, to take that building down to the ' Coxe's Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, (ed. 1798) vol. i. p. 4. = Epitaph at Hitcham, Bucks. A better scholar would probably have written " Etonensis s holce, in orbe terrarum per ipsum factcB maxima, magistri." 3 Carlisle's Grammar Schools. vol. i. p. 61. ' 266 UPPER SCHOOL. floor of the school if not to the foundation, and to erect another with walls of greater thickness and strength, and to carry up those walls thirty-three or thirty-four feet high, and then lay on a flat roof to be covered with lead, aS all the rest of the College is, and to make a writing school with other convenient rooms below for the use of the schoolmasters. That so the old school may be fitted up and added to the Long Chamber, which will make room enough for the whole number of scholars and choristers to be lodged conveniently. " There is a building within twelve or fourteen yards of the Long Chamber which may be turned into an infirmary, with- accommodation enough for ten or twelve at a time, which is more than any can remember to have been sick in the College at once." ' A list of the contributors has been preserved, and in it may be noticed the names of the Archbishop of York, the Lord Chief Justice Holt, Lord Godolphin, and John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, the intimate friend of Provost Allestree.'' The ex- penses of erecting the Upper School came to a little less than 2,300/., the windows and other portions of the older building being evidently used over again. All the payments passed through the hands of John Hawtrey, one of the Fellows, who was deeply interested in the scheme.^ Etonians need scarcely be informed that the other alterations proposed were not carried out. The Upper School seems to have been finished in 1694, and doors were hung in the gateway under it ; but a strange dispute arose as to the desirability of engaging a porter to attend to them. Provost Cradock entertained a very decided opinion on the subject, and thought it "not only unsafe but very dishonourable for the College to be without 'MS. by Provost Cradock in 1 ^ Carlisle's Grainmar Schools, the Library at Eton. 1 vol. i. pp. 61, 62. I ' Eton Audit Books, 1692 — 1693. - J. I'jl Staircase to the C ■"*-**'^ DIVERSIONS FROM STUDY. 267 that officer." "It was still usual for the gates of the School Yard, the Stable Yard, and the Cloister, to stand open all through the night. " In Mr. Rosewell's time, the schollers had frequently bottles of wine drawn up to their windows in baskets (though they are lockt in), and that is not to be prevented as long as their chamber lies open on both sides. In Dr. Roderick's time, they got a false key to their own door and went four or five abroad at midnight, for which severall were expelled : that could not have hapned if the gates had been kept by a porter." ' Mischievous experiments on the locks of the school-room and of the Long Chamber had always been a fruitful source of annoyance to the ruling powers ; ^ but sports which would now be considered reprehensible were tolerated, and even encouraged, at Eton, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It seems that the College butcher had to provide a ram annually at election-tide, to be hunted and killed by the scholars.3 We first hear of this barbarous pastime in 1687, when a " ram club " appears in the bill of " extras " for a boy named Patrick ; ■* and another boy wrote to his father for leave to stay at Eton on the last day of the half, so as to have " the satisfaction of seeing the ram die here according to custom."^ Four of Newborough's pupils. Lord Churchill, the only son of the Earl of Marlborough, the two sons of Sir Benjamin Bathurst, and a certain Peter Boscawen, were for a time called away from their studies in 1696, in order to become the playfellows of the Duke of Gloucester, son of the Princess Anne. On their arrival at the Castle, the young Duke ' Letter from Dr. Cradock to the Bishop of Ely, in Lambeth MS. 953, f. 18. March 27, 1694. = Eton Audit Rolls and Books, passim. I of Eton, p. 58. 3 Sloane MS. 4839, f. 89. "* Etoniana, p. 62, quoting Tan- ner MS. 20, f. 62. s Chattock and Wood's Sketches 268 HENRY GODOLPHIN. proposed a mock battle, and they all fought in St. George's Hall with small weapons, until the sheath of Peter Bathurst's sword slipped off, and the Duke received a slight wound from the naked steel.' The successful resistance of the Kingsmen to the undue exercise of the royal prerogative did not inspire the Fellows of Eton with a like spirit of independence, and on the death of Provost Cradock in 1695, they submitted without a struggle to a mandamus from Court.^ It is possible that they might have acted differently if the person recommended to them had been any one less acceptable than their own Vice-Provost, Henry Godolphin, brother of the Minister. In him the College found a kind ruler and a generous benefactor. He set up the statue of Henry VI. by Francis Bird in the centre of the School Yard at his own expense, and in 1 700 he con- tributed 1000/. towards the fund for the alterations in the Church.3 The work undertaken in the previous year was carried out according to the taste of the time, no regard being paid to the original style of the building. The east wall was concealed from view by an elaborate altar-piece of inlaid wood ; a new roof was constructed, plastered, and painted ; stalls and high panelling were placed in front of the old mural paintings ; and a huge organ-loft, about twenty-five feet in depth, approached by a flight of steps, was placed across the Church, within the choir. The old altar-rails were sent off to Burnham Church.4 Seven new vaults were made, and some of the seats for the parishioners were removed into the so-called ante-chapel.s The new wood-work, however inappropriate to its position, was good of its kind, and very costly.* It is popularly said to have ' Strickland's Queens of Eng- land, (ed. 1854) vol. viii. pp. 51, 52. = Eton Register, vol. iv. f. 76. October 23, 1695. 3 Sloane MS. 4843, ff. 102, 103. ■* Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. iv. p. 265. s Sloane MS. 4843, f. 381. * Two of the fluted oak columns are now in the South Kensington Museum. INTERIOR OF THE CHAi'EL, A.D 1816,, THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. ■l(y() been designed by Sir Christopher Wren, but there is no mention of Eton in the pubHshed list of his works,' and it may safely be attributed to Hopson the joiner, or Banks the surveyor.^ The appeal of the College for funds to pay for these alterations met with a ready response, and 3,200/. were collected. King's College, Cambridge, contributing upwards of fifty guineas. The list of subscribers contains the names of Bishop Patrick, Lords Godolphin and Thomond, Sir Stephen Fox, Sir Bourchier Wray, and Dr. Roderick.3 There seems to have been a good deal of esprit de corps among old Etonians at this period, and many of them used to meet in London once a year, in order to listen to a sermon at St. Paul's, at St. Augustine's or ■ at St. Mary-le-Bow's, and then to dine together.4 When John Newborough found himself compelled by ill health to resign the post of Head-Master, he was succeeded by Andrew Snape, of King's College, a preacher of considerable reputation.5 Dr. Snape was chaplain to Queen Anne, and a favourite at Court in her reign ; but he could not adapt his theological and political views to those which became prevalent on the accession of the House of Hanover. His wrath was fairly roused by a latitudinarian sermon preached by Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor, in 1717, and found vent in a pamphlet which passed through seventeen editions in the course of a few months. In proclaiming himself the upholder of the authority of the Church, of the apostolical succession, and of the duty of fervency in prayer, Snape provoked a number of answers. Pamphlet followed pamphlet, and the " Bangorian Controversy," as it was called, became the main subject of debate " in coffee-houses among the men, and at tea ' Wren's Parentalia. " Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 447. 3 Carlisle's Grammar Schools, vol. i. p. 59- ' There is a list of the preachers in Rawlinson MS. B. 268, f. 279. s Eton Register, vol. iv. f. 88. October 11, 1711. 270 ANDREW SNAPE. tables with the ladies." ' The High Church party applauded him as the champion of orthodoxy, while his adversaries, generally anonymous, did not scruple to resort to personalities. One writer addressed a Letter to the Scholars of Eaton, and another likened Snape to Orbilius, and sought to make him contemptible in verse : — " Pride and ill-nature seasons all his stile, Each paragraph o'erflows with pedant bile. His every period crabbed and severe Smells of the birch, and terrifies the ear." The Snapcs had been serjeant-farriers to the Kings of England for upwards of two centuries, and were somewhat proud of the fact ; but the Head-Master of Eton was twitted with his low origin, and described as " Sprung from the anvil and inured to flame." ^ Party spirit ran so high at Eton that Thomas Thackeray, an Assistant Master of latitudinarian sympathies, had to throw up his place. He afterwards became Head-Master of Harrow, and was singled out by Bishop Hoadley to be Archdeacon of Wilts. It is not recorded whether he understood his duties better than his patron, who, though Bishop of Bangor for several years, never once visited his diocese. Snape's pamphlets gave great offence to the Whigs, and his name, together with that of Dean Sherlock, was summarily re- moved from the list of chaplains to the King.3 Nevertheless, all the exertions of the Court in favour of Edward Waddington, Fellow of Eton, failed to deter the self-willed Kingsmen from electing Snape as their Provost in 17 19. The School of Eton ' Letter to Dr. Snape, p. i. " Cole's MS. vol. xvi. ff. 106, 117; Snape's Anatomy ofatt Horse, 1683. 3 Epistolary Correspondence, etc. of Bishop Atterbiiry, vol. iii. p. 342. HENRY BLAND. 271 had prospered under his management, and shortly before his departure the number of scholars reached 399, when the Head-Master was accused of having added the name of a townboy to the list, without consulting the parents, in order to make up a total of 400.' Dr. Snape's farewell speech to the boys at Eton is said to have drawn tears from their eyes.^ Henry Bland, who succeeded Snape at Eton, belonged to a different party, being a Whig in politics, and, if we may believe contemporary scandal, an Arian in creed. 3 He in- troduced a new system of ' Declamations,' according to which two boys had to sustain opposite sides in an argument. This led to a good deal of rivalry, and, in one case, to an undignified scuffle between two of the senior Collegers. Thomas Morell has recorded how he knocked William Battle's head against the wall of the Chapel, but how he was in turn paid out " with a swinging slap on the face three days afterwards " from his adversary's mother. Mrs. Battle was indeed a very zealous champion for her son, and once went so far as to charge Dr. Snape himself with postponing the time of a ' remove,' or examination, while Morell ' stayed out ' with a toothache. Battle afterwards set up as a physician at Uxbridge, and was befriended by Provost Godolphin, who on one occasion sent his own coach and four to fetch him to the Lodge. When the doctor was preparing to write a prescription, his patient sat up in bed and said : — " You need not trouble yourself to write. I only sent for you to give you credit in the neighbourhood ! " ^ Another promising pupil of Dr. Bland's, Edward Littleton, went up to King's in 17 16, and wrote thence to one of his old schoolfellows, explaining the change in the nature of his studies. The classics he says were neglected. ' Sloane MS. 4843, f. 270. ^ Hearne's Diary, (ed. 1869) vol. ii. p. 108. 3 Preface to Willymott's Thomas d Keinpis. * Nichols's Literary Anecdotes vol. iv. pp. 600, 601. 272 STUDIES AT CAMBRIDGE. " Now algebra, geometry, Arithmetic, astronomy. Optics, chronology, and statics. All tiresome points of mathematics ; With twenty harder names than these, Disturb my brains, and break my peace. All seeming inconsistencies Are solved by a's and ^'s ; Our senses are disprov'd by prisms. Our arguments by syllogisms. If I should confidently write — This ink is black, this paper white, Or, to express myself yet fuller. Should say that black or white's a colour. They'd contradict it and perplex one With motion, light, and its reflexion. And solve th' apparent falsehood by The curious texture of the eye. Should I the poker want, and take it, When't looks as hot as fire can make it. And burn my finger and my coat. They'd flatly tell me 'tis not hot ; The fire, say they, has in't 'tis true The power of causing heat in you ; But no more heats, in fire that heats you Than there is pain in stick that beats you. * * * * We're told how planets roll on high How large their orbits, and how nigh ; I hope in little time to know Whether the moon's a cheese or no." ' A narrow manuscript roll entitled a "Bill of Eton Schole"'^ and dated 1718, shows the names of 353 boys. The successive ' Printed in Dodsley's Collection \ ' In the Library at Eton. 0/ Poems, vol. vi. p. 292. | MASTERS AND TUTORS. 273 forms were called ' Bible Seat,' ' First Form,' ' Lower Remove,' ' Second Form,' ' Lower Greek,' ' Third Form,' ' Fourth Form,' ' Remove,' ' Fifth Form,' and ' Sixth Form.' The lowest pf these forms contained 24 boys, the highest 53. There were eight Assistant Masters— four in each part of the School. The exact date at which the Head-Master and Usher found them- selves unable to manage the whole School does not appear in the registers, as the Assistant Masters were not, and are not, members of the College. John Newborough seems to have been an Assistant about 1680, and after this time many Kings- men returned to their old school to take part in the work of education. Two of those who did so, Thomas Johnson, and William Willymott, were the authors or editors of books which continued to be used at Eton until the present century.' It was once customary for young noblemen to have private tutors, and a person named Graham acted in that capacity towards the Marquess of Graham, who was one of eight noblemen mentioned in the list of 17 18." The condition of the School has always borne some relation to the prosperity of the upper class of society. In the year of the South Sea scheme, there were 425 names on the bill, or list ; in the next year, when people were smarting under their losses, the number was reduced by nearly fifty.^ At that period, there were generally more boys in the Lower School than in the Upper School. Some idea of the average cost of education at an Eton boarding master's ■* house in the early part of the eighteenth century maybe obtained from some MS. bills which have been preserved. The following possesses some interest as being one of the earliest notices extant of the illustrious Lord Chatham : — ' Thomas Johnson edited "iVoz/«j GrcBcoJ'um epigrafntnatum et poem- atum Delectus in usum Schola Etonensis" of which a ninth edition was published in 1724. " Sloane MS. 4843, f. 399. 3 Ibid. f. 270. ■• This designation occurs in the Eton Register of Burials. 274 WILLIAM PITT. " Mr. William Pitt, his Bill. 1719. Paid at the House where Mr. William was when he fell down paid a man and horse to go with me paid for a shaze To the surgeon for attendance, bleeding, etc. To the other surgeon for going to visit him 2 pair of stockings paid for curing his chilblanes Fire money to the Master School sweeping 8^., chapell /{d., water ' T,d. Share of fire in his Chamber to Easter 6 pound of candles A pair of garters Halfe a year's cleaning shooes to Midsummer Worstead and thread to mend his Linnen and stockings Hatter's bill Barber, a Quarter Taylor's bill Shoemaker's bill Bookseller's bill Writing master halfe a year Aug"- 7'" To Mr. Burchet halfe a years Tuition To Mr. Good halfe a years Teaching For halfe a years board due Aug"' 7* 17 19 13 6 3 S 2 2 I I 6 6 5 I 6 I 3 10 3 6 4 S I I 8 7 6 3 6 19 6 I 11 6 I 2 4 4 2 2 12 10 29 3' Another bill for William Pitt, sent in exactly four years later, amounted to a few shillings less, many of the charges being alike. In 1723, the payment of 2/. 2s. "for halfe a year's teaching" was made to Dr. Bland, the Head-Master, instead of to Francis Goode, the Usher. William Pitt was considered a promising scholar, as appears from the second part of the following letter addressed to his father by the tutor : — ^ In a later bill this item appears as " cleaning the water.'' Sir, WILLIAM PITT. 275 " Eton, Feb. 4th, 1722. " I am very much concern'd that my letter should give you a fresh uneasiness, after so severe a fit of the gout. Believe me, Sir, my design was not to throw off my pupil ' (as you understood by my letter), but to advise what ap- peared to me most for his advantage. He has unhappily lost a great deal of time by his own negligence, but I think his natural abilities are so good, that he may recover it at the University, if he takes a good turn, which I imagine he will do upon his conversing more with men, and I am satisfied he is sufficiently furnished with Latin to enter upon those studies. Before I answer'd your letter, I thought it proper to talk with Doctor Bland, who has been very ill of a fever ever since I had the honour of yours, and this is the first day of his coming abroad, otherwise I had certainly wrote to you before. The Dr. presents his most humble service, and is of the same opinion with me, that your son is capable of undertaking the studies of the University, because most of the books that he will read are wrote in Latin, and it is the Greek tongue which he has found him deficient in. " Your younger son has made a great progress since his coming hither, indeed I never was concern'd with a young gentleman of so good abilities, and at the same time of so good a disposition, and there is no question to be made but he will answer all your hopes. " I am. Sir, " Your most obedient and most humble servant, " Will. Burchett." "To Robert Pitt, Esq. at Stratford near Old Sarum." A letter written by William Pitt when he was almost fifteen years of age " does not reflect much credit on the writing master : — • Thomas Pitt, afterwards M.P., ' Endorsed: — "From my son owner of Boconnoc, and father of William Sept'; 29"^, received Oct' the first Lord Camelford. 10"' 1723." T 2 276 WILLIAM PITT. " Eaton, September the 29th. " Hon"'* Sir, " I write this to pay my duty to you, and to lett you know that I am well. I hope you and my mama have found a great benefit from the Bath, and it would be a very great satisfaction to me, to hear how you do ; I was in hopes of an answer to my last letter, to have heard how you both did, and how I should direct my letters to you ; for not knowing how to direct my letters, has hindered me writing to you, my time has been pretty much taken up for this three weaks, in my trying for to gett into the fiveth form, and I am now removed into it ; pray my duty to mama and service to my uncle and aunt Stuart if now att the Bath. I am with great respect, " Hon'" Sir, " Your most dutiful son "W. Pitt."' It has been observed that William Pitt had three remark- able school-fellows — Charles Pratt, George Lyttleton, and Henry Fox — each of whom became, like himself, an eminent statesman and the founder of a peerage.' The second of these wrote two or three clever poems while still at Eton. Nichols has printed one of the half-yearly bills of a certain Walter Gough who boarded at Bartlet's in 1726. Most of the items correspond with those in William Pitt's bills, the most distinctive feature being an advance of 2s. 6d. to the boy on the 1st of March "for St. David," on account of his Welsh origin. The charge for " half a year's board and study " was ten guineas. For the same period, the Head-Master received two guineas, and the writing-master one guinea, no other teacher being mentioned. During part of his career at Eton, Walter Gough was the pupil of Edward Littleton, but the ' The MSS. quoted above occur [ sion of Lady Louisa Fortescue. in a small 410 volume of Lord " Cm.sy's Emitient Etonians, -p. Chatham's Letters, in the posses- ( 276. STEPHEN WESTON. 277 latter was elected to a Fellowship in 1726, and was conse- quently obliged to give up his tutorial duties." Three out of the previous seven vacancies among the Fellows had been caused by the elevation of William Fleetwood, Francis Hare, and Stephen Weston, respectively, to bishoprics. The name of Weston still survives at Eton in the popular designation of the open space which is officially called the The Lower School and Long Chamber from Weston's Yard. " Stable Yard." A biographer says of him : — " Having been for a great part of his life engaged in the business of a school- master, and at the head of a parcel of boys, he was too apt to consider himself in the same position at the head of his clergy, who were much dissatisfied with him upon that account, ' Wichols's Illustrations of Literaiure, vol. iii. p. 239. 278 FELLOWS OF ETON. as also upon his rough and unhewn manner of behaviour." ' He had been Usher from 1693 to 1707. Another Etonian bishop, Edward Waddington, was allowed to hold his Fellowship in commendam, very much to his own advantage if not to that of his diocese. He eventually- bequeathed his valuable library to Eton College.^ Richard Hill, who was elected Fellow in 17 14, had, while in deacon's orders, been successively envoy to Brussels, Paymaster of the Forces in Flanders, and a Lord of the Admiralty. On resigning his civil appointments, he had been ordained priest, but so lightly did he value his sacred profession, that he omitted all mention of it from the epitaph which he composed for his own tombstone. 3 John Hawtrey, another Fellow, gave to the College the advowson of Burnham Church ; and the advowsons of the churches of Worplesdon, Farnham Royal, and Clewer, were acquired about the same time from the Duke of Somerset in exchange for that of Petworth Church, which was situated near one of his residences.* A claim of the Provost and Fellows to 15/. a year in com- pensation for the three tuns of Gascony wine granted by Henry VI., and of 4/. ^s. a year for an impost duty granted by Elizabeth, was admitted by the Treasury in 1 702 ; but their claim for arrears since 1674 and 1672 was surrendered in consideration of a renewal from the Crown of the lease of the ' Christopher ' Inn.s Out of the ordinary revenue they were able to make several structural alterations in the College which cannot now be re- ' Cole's MS. vol. xvi., f. 76. = Shane MS. 4843, f. 103. 3 Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard Hill., Preface. * Manning and Bray's History of Surrey, vol. iii. p. 99. = Domestic State Papers, Eliza- beth, vol. xlviii. no. 45 ; Etoniana, p. 5 1 ; Treasury Papers, vol. Ixxviii, no. 57. This hostelry was in exist- ence as early as the year 1523, when a certain Nicholas Williams is mentioned as lodging "adsigniwi Christoferi." Eton Audit Book, 1522— 1523. HENRY BLAND. 279 garded as improvements. In 1691, they paid upwards of 130/. " for making the staires into the Hall, for paving the Hall, and for other worke," which probably included the mutilation of the Perpendicular archway over the stairs leading from the Cloister to the Hall' The Cloister was further disfigured in 1725 by the erection of dwarf walls from pier to pier, sur- mounted by iron railings preventing access to the greensward which they surround.^ In 1706 or 1707, the School Yard, which was previously laid out in grass plots intersected by paths, was drained and paved with stone.3 Before closing this chapter, we must notice Bland's ap- pointment to the Deanery of Durham, which caused him to re- sign the office of Head-Master in the summer of 1728, though he retained his house at Eton a few months later. He owed his promotion to his steady adherence to the Whig party, on whose behalf he used to write political pamphlets and articles. Pope mentions " gratis-given Bland, Sent with a pass, and vagrant through the land." '^ In October 1728, Bland rendered good service to the Government by receiving as his guest, either at Eton or at Windsor, the Duke of Ripperda, one of the most extraordinary adventurers who has ever fled to England for refuge.^ " Eton Audit Book, 1690 — 1691. (Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 453.) = Willis and Clark, vol. i. p. 459, 3 Ibid. p. 463. ■• The Dunciad, i, 1. 232, 233. ' Coxe's Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, (ed. 1798) vol. i. p. 318 ; vol. ii. pp. 615, 616. 1/28 — 1760. William George — Jacob Bryant — Horace Walpole — Gray's Ode — Visits of the Duke of Cumberland — Francis Goode — A Contested Election at King's— William Cooke— John Burton— The Library- Visit of George II. ILLIAM GEORGE, who succeeded Henry Bland in the office of Head- Master/ was a scholar of the approved Etonian type, especially skilled in the composition of Latin verses ; = but he is said to have been wanting in common sense and practical ability. One of his pupils, Charles Pratt, afterwards Lord Chancellor under the name of Earl Camden, describes him as naturally good natured and pleasant, yet ridiculous from his pedantic manners. " He undertook the care of that School without parts, of the kind I mean that was necessary to govern it. This brought him under difficulties from which he had not either sense or spirit enough to extricate himself These plagues and vexations wrought upon his temper, and made him sour. His absurdity, the gift of Nature, still remained ; and by ' Eton Register, vol. iv. f. 116. May 29, 1728. ' Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. V. p. 339 ; vol. ix. p. 575. WILLIAM GEORGE. 281 working upon a mind crossed by ill-success, made him not only foolish, but proud, ill-mannerly, and brutal." ' Dr. George was popularly nick-named " Dionysius the tyrant." " He certainly was not very courteous to ladies. When a would-be blue-stocking repeated a few Latin verses to him over a card table ^s a specimen of her attainments, he remarked brusquely : — " Madam, if you were in the lowest form of the Upper School, I should lay you upon our block for that recitation, which contains in three lines two false quantities, and the same number of concords equally false." 3 Frederick, Prince of Wales, is said to have peeped through a chink in the doors of the Upper School one morning, and to have been greatly amused at the bombastic style in which the Head- Master was explaining the Greek lesson.-t A list of the boys educated at Eton under Dr. George, would include the names of several of the most distinguished English statesmen and writers of the eighteenth century, but the records of their school-days are scanty. Jacob Bryant, the mythologist, did indeed in after years surprise George HI. with an account of his performances, which has found a place in Miss Burney's diary : — ■ " ' You were an Etonian, Mr. Bryant,' said the King, ' but pray, for what were you most famous at school .'"' We all expected, from the celebrity of his scholarship, to hear him answer, his Latin exercises ; but no such thing ! ' Cudgel- ling, Sir ; I was most famous for that.' While a general laugh followed this speech, he very gravely proceeded to particularise his feats : though unless you could see the " Nichols'g Illustrations of Literature, vol. i. p. 564. " Wordsworth's University Life in the Eighteenth Century, p. 620. 3 Nichols's Illustrations of Literature, vol. iii. p. 807. * Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. p. 433. The details of the story there given are erroneous in several respects. Ayscough was not appointed tutor 10 the young princes until about two years after George had resigned his post at Eton, and they can hardly have been learning Greek at the re- spective ages of five and four. 282 JACOB BRYANT. diminutive figure, the weak, thin, feeble, little frame whence issued his proclamation of his powers, you can but very in- adequately judge of the comic effect of his big talk. ' Your Majesty, Sir, knows General Conway ? I broke his head for him, Sir.' The shout which ensued did not at all inter- fere with the steadiness of his further detail. ' And there's another man. Sir, a great stout fellow. Sir, as ever you saw — Dr. Gibbon of the Temple — I broke his head, too, Sir ; I don't know if he remembers it.' " ' Bryant's physical powers were better employed on another occasion in rescuing Edward Barnard, afterwards Provost, from a watery grave in the Thames.^ In genuine love for Eton few have ever surpassed Horace Walpole. He used often to revert with pleasure to his " quad- ruple alliance " with Ashton, Gray, and West, and on the occasion of a visit to his old haunts, he wrote the following letter, full of Eton slang, to his friend George Montagu : — " Christopher Inn, Eton. " The Christopher — Lord ! how great I used to think any- body just landed at the Christopher ! But here are no boys for me to send for — here I am, like Noah, just returned into his old world again, with all sorts of queer feels about me. By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound ; I recollect so much, and remember so little, and want to play about, and am so afraid of my playfellows, and am ready to shirk Ashton, and can't help making fun of myself, and envy a dame over the way, that has just locked in her boarders, and is going to sit down in a little hot parlour to a very bad supper, so comfortably ; and I could be so jolly a dog if I did not fat, which, by the way, is the first time the word was ever applicable to me. In short, I should be out of all bounds if I was to tell you half I feel, how young again I am one minute, and how old the next. But do ' Madame D'Arblay's Z'zary, vol. ] ° Nichols's Literary Anecdotes; iii. p. 325. I vol. iv. p. 669 ; vol. viii. p. 534. HORACE WALPOLE. 283 come and feel with me, when you will — to-morrow — adieu ! If I don't compose myself a little more before Sunday morning, when Ashton is to preach, I shall certainly be in a bill for laughing at Church ; but how to help it, to see him in the pulpit, when the last time I saw him here was standing up funking over against a Conduct to be catechised." ' The Christopher Inn, a.d. i8k8.^ From the lively Walpole, we must turn to his friend and schoolfellow, Thomas Gray, whose vein of melancholy is nowhere more perceptible than in his celebrated Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.^ ■ Letters of Horace Walpole, (ed. Cunningham) vol. i. p. 1 5. = From a drawing by J. Buckler in the possession of the late Dr. Goodford. ' As some justification for print- ing any part of a poem so well known, I have copied the spelling and the punctuation of the original folio edition of 1747. There is a translation of this Ode in the Mnsa' Etoncnsesior 1772. 284 GRAY'S ODE. " Ye distant Spires, ye antique Towers, That crown the watry Glade, Where grateful Science still adores Her Henry s holy Shade ; And ye that from the stately Brow Of Windsor's Heights th' Expanse below Of Grove, of Lawn, of Mead survey. Whose Turf, whose shade, whose Flowers among Wanders the hoary Thames along His Silver-winding Way. " Ah happy Hills,' ah pleasing Shade, Ah Fields belov'd in vain. Where once my careless Childhood stray'd, A Stranger yet to Pain ! I feel the Gales that from ye blow, A momentary Bliss bestow. As waving fresh their gladsome Wing, My weary Soul they seem to sooth, And, redolent of Joy and Youth, To breathe a second Spring. " Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen Full many a sprightly Race Disporting on thy Margent green The Paths of Pleasure trace. Who foremost now delight to cleave With pliant Arm thy glassy Wave } The captive Linnet which enthrall .'' What idle Progeny succeed To chase the rolling Circle's Speed, Or urge the flying Ball .' " While some on earnest Business bent Their murm'ring Labours ply, 'Gainst graver Hours, that bring Constraint To sweeten Liberty : ' Moultrie's emendation — sub- I very tempting, as Eton and its stituting " Rills " for " Hills,'' is I neighbourhood are singularly flat. G/^AVS ODE. 285 Some bold Adventurers disdain The Limits of their little Reigrr, And unknown Regions dare descry : Still as they run they look behind, They hear a Voice in every Wind, And snatch a fearful Joy. " Gay Hope is theirs by Fancy fed, Less pleasing when possest : The Tear forgot as soon as shed, The Sunshine of the Breast : Theirs buxom Health of rosy Hue, Wild Wit, Invention ever-new, And lively Chear of Vigour born ; The thoughtless Day, the easy Night, The Spirits pure, the Slumbers light, That fly th' Approach of Morn." Several of the expressions have been severely criticised, and many Etonians will endorse the late Lord Carlisle's remark, that " rollicking carelessness " would describe the feelings of a boy out of bounds better than " fearful joy." Gray's enumeration of Eton pastimes is far from complete. Horace Walpole mentions games of cricket and expeditions against bargemen as popular in his school-days,' and the ram-hunt used to be maintained with spirit at election-tide year after year. The young Duke of Cumberland came to take part in this sport, on the 1st of August, 1730. " The Captain of the School presented him with a ram- club, with which H.R.H. struck the first stroke. H.R.H. ' was in at the death of the ram, and his club was bloodyed according to custom. There was afterwards a speech made by the Captain of the School,'' at which the Duke was ' Letters of Horace Walpole, May 6, 1736. " William Cooke, afterwards Head-Master and Fellow of Eton, and Provost of King's. The speech is printed in his Muses Juveniles. There is an allusion to this visit in the Musa Etonenses, vol. ii. p. 1 1 5 : — " Arietis ad mortem, venisti claviger." 286 HUNTING THE RAM. present. He then proceeded to see the Hall, the Library, School, and the Long Chamber, and it was generally observed that H.R.H returned to Windsor very well pleased." ' It was on one of these occasions that an active ram crossed the Thames, and ran through the market-place at Windsor with the young hunters in full cry after it. Such severe ex- ercise in summer being deemed dangerous to the health of the boys, the unfortunate rams were thenceforth hamstrung, and, after the regular speech, deliberately beaten to death in Weston's Yard. The custom became so utterly barbarous after this alteration, that it was finally abolished in 1747 ; but as late as 1760 a ram was served up in pasties at the high table in hall, at the great dinner on Election Monday.'^ The Duke of Cumberland's tutor, Stephen Poyntz, a Kingsman, and a good scholar, obtained a reversionary grant of the Provostship during the lifetime of Godolphin ; but when the place actually became vacant he lost it through not being in holy orders.3 Sir Robert Walpole bestowed it on his old schoolfellow and supporter, Henry Bland, whom he had already appointed Dean of Durham.* This Prime Minister's constant patronage of Kingsmen and Etonians was a cause of annoyance to many persons who had not been so fortunate as to know him in his earlier years.s One of his visits to Eton is thus recorded by a Fellow, who was probably a Tory in politics :— "Mem. August 7, 1735 being the Thursday in Election week, William Duke of Cumberland, attended by his governour Mr. Pointz and his sub-governour Mr. Wind- ham, Sir Robert Walpole, Loi'd Walpole, and Edward Walpole Esq'., Lord Chancellor Talbot and his son Rawlinson MS. B. 266, f. 153. Sloane MS. 4839, f. 89. Rawlinson MS. B. 265, f. 20. •• Carlisle's History of the Bland Fa mily. 5 Cole s MS. vol. xvi. f. 133. THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND. 287 William Talbot Esq'., the Duke of St. Albans, Lord Charles Cavendish, Lord Ila,i and Lord Tankerville, all bred at Eton, Duke of Devonshire, Lord Harvy, Lord Harcourt, Mr. Winnington and others, came to Eton to hear the publick exercises. For what purpos the Provost's Hall was fitted up with a-Hautpas at the upper end and a chair of state upon it, at the lower end a place was raisd and raild in large enough for three boys to speak abreast. The great Company satt in chairs semicircularly placed of each side the Hall, the rest stood behind. The Duke and Company were first entertained at breakfast in the Election Chamber, there being three tables, the one of fruit, another of sweetmeats and cakes, the other of venison pasty, etc. Tea, coffee and chocolate were brought as called for. I believe there was four score people partook of this breakfast. The exercises began with Declamations on this subject — Spectant me inille loquentem. Then followed long copies of verses on the King and Queen and Duke and Chancellor but mostly on Sir Robert, and lastly extempore verses on the same subjects but from different Themes. 'Tis to be wished that these performances may be lost and forgott, that posterity may not see how abandond this place was to flattery when Dr. B was Provost and when Sir Robert was first Minister. However the boys performed so well, that afterwards at dinner there was a collection made of about 140 guineas for the fourteen boys that spoke, besides 100/. given to the College. The present shewd the design of the Duke to be a compliment to the College, but the Provost took all possible care that we shou'd have no share in the compliment, tho we had in the disposing of the present. For he receivd the Duke, unattended by his Fellows, nor did he present them. They walked about as strangers within their own walls." "^ It was probably on this occasion that the Duke of Cumberland gave to the College the green rugs which used to ' Afterwards Duke of Argyll. | " MS. in the Library at Eton. 288 LORD LINCOLN. be annually displayed on the beds of the Scholars during the election week, until the subdivision of the Long Chamber thirty years ago. The obsequious verses are preserved in the British Museum,' as is also a volume of Latin poems addressed to Queen Caroline by the Eton scholars, in 1732, on the subject of her Hermitage in Richmond Park.^ The boys were not allowed to be idle in Dr. George's time, if we may judge by the following letter to the Duke of Newcastle from one of the private tutors : — " May it please your Grace, " I am to make my Lord Lincoln's excuses for not writing, which considering all things a'n't bad ones. He has twice as much book {sic) and desire to play as ever he had in his life, and cant find a moments leisure ; From con- struing and pearcing {sic) Greek he is gon to make verses and from verses to prose, and from prose to Greek again ; what time for letters .' and what a change from Claremont t Nevertheless the number of boys in the same case with him- self makes the pill go down tho 'tis a bitter one. He has been examined by the Doctor and is placed in the 4* Form, last remove, till further trial, tho I am of opinion 'tis better to keep them there than to hurry him through the school too fast. He is perfectly well in health. " I am, etc., " HUME.3 " Eton, July the 19, 1733." An advertisement in the London Evening Post, of November 9, 1 73 1, affords a curious insight into the manner in which the Usher used to eke out the scanty stipend allowed to him by the -Statutes : — " Whereas Mr. Franc. Goode, under-master of Eaton, does hereby signify that there will be at Christmas next, or soon after, two vacancies in his school — viz., as assistants to. ■ Royal MS. ^ii 271. e = Royal MS. ^ 27 3- « 3 The Academy, May 15, 1875. AN ELECTION AT KINGS. 289 him and tutors to the young, gents ; if any two gentlemen of either University (who have commenced the degree of B.A., at least) shall think themselves duly qualified, and are desirous of such an employment, let them enquire of John Potts, pickleman in Gracious Street, or at Mr. G.'s own house in Eaton College, where they may purchase the same at a reasonable rate, and on conditions fully to their own satisfaction. " F. GoODE. " N.B. — It was very erroneously reported that the last place was disposed of under 40J." Goode is described as " a most easy and good-tempered man, and, though no great scholar, yet sufficient for the post be held in the schole, where he was much beloved by his scholars." ' A severe contest for the Provostship of King's College began in September, 1742. Thomas Thicknesse and John Chapman were the earliest candidates in the field, and the former of these obtained a royal mandate for the qualifying degree of B.D. The Provost however. Dr. Snape, survived about three months, and when the vacancy actually occurred, the candidates were William George, Head-Master of Eton, Thomas Thackeray, and John Chapman. The conclave lasted no less than thirty-one hours. A letter from Cambridge thus describes the proceedings : — " The Fellows went into Chapel on Monday, before noon in the morning, as the Statute directs. After prayers, and sacrament, they began to vote — 22 for George ; 16 for Thackeray ; 10 for Chapman. Thus they continued, scrutinizing, and walking about, eating, and sleeping ; some of them smoaking. Still the same numbers for each candidate, till yesterday about noon (for they held that in 48 hours allowed for the Election no adjournment could be made) when the Tories, Chapman's friends, refusing absolutely to concur with either of the two other parties, ■ Cole's MS. vol. xvi. f. 144. 290 WILLIAM COOKE. Thackeray's votes went over to George by agreement, and he was declared. " A friend of mine, a curious man, tells me he took a survey of his brothers at the hour of two in the morning, and that never was a more curious, or a more diverting spectacle. Some, wrapped in blankets, erect in their stalls like mummies ; others asleep on cushions, like so many Gothic tombs. Here a red cap over a wig ; there a face lost in the cape of a rug. One blowing a chafing-dish with a surplice sleeve ; another warming a little negus, or sipping Coke upon Littleton, i.e. tent and brandy. Thus did they combat the cold of that frosty night, which has not killed any of them, to my infinite surprize." ' William Cooke, one of the Assistant-Masters, who was appointed to succeed Dr. George at Eton, broke down in health within three years, and had to resign. The boys were glad enough to escape from his severe discipline.^ He after- wards incurred the enmity of Cole the antiquary, who made no attempt to conceal his own feelings in the following bio- graphical sketch : — ■ " William Cook, D.D., Fellow of King's, Assistant at Eton, made Master of the Schole, for which post being found not equal, he was made Fellow of the College to let him down gently ; and to get rid of his impertinence, insolence and other unamiable qualities, he was strongly recommended to be Provost of King's on Dr. Sumner's death. It is not the first time a man's unsocial and bad disposition has been the occasion of his advancement. I know the College would be delighted to kick him up higher, so that they could get rid of a formal important Pedant, who will be a schoolmaster in whatever station of life his fortune may advance him to." 3 ' Nichols's Illiistratio7is of IJterature, vol. i. p. 95 ; vol. iii. p. 140; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. ix. pp. 251, 702, 743 ; Home Office Church Book, 1742. ' Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. p. 587 ; vol. ix. p. 629— 631. 3 Cole's M.S. vol. xlvii. f. 213. HEREDITARY SCHOLARS. 291 The studied acrimony of such a passage is almost enough to make one doubt its justice, and closer enquiry proves that there was an interval of at least a year and a half between Cooke's resignation of the Head-Mastership, and his elec- tion to a Fellowship. It is almost superfluous to observe that the old Etonians at King's knew well enough what sort of man they were choosing to preside over their College, but it is not improbable that a boy who published a Greek tragedy while still at Eton, grew up somewhat of a pedant. Dr. Cooke's profile was exactly delineated in an engraving in Spence's Polymetis, representing an ass dressed as a school- master, and, although it has since been contended that the likeness was accidental, it is certain that the plate had to be omitted from the second edition of the book." John Sumner, who was appointed Head-Master in 1745,= and Richard Sleech, who was elected Provost in the following year, do not demand any particular notice. Both these sur- names occur frequently in the Registrum Regale. One very natural consequence of the release of the Fellows from compulsory celibacy, was that they became closely connected with one another by intermarriages in their families. Before the days of genuine examinations, the members of certain families looked upon Scholarships at Eton, and Fellowships at King's, almost as part of their birthright. John Burton, by far the most distinguished Fellow of Eton in the middle of the eighteenth century, was an Oxonian, and owed his place to his having been tutor to a son of Dr. Bland. In 1733 he was presented to the living of Mapledurham, vacant by the death of Dr. Littleton ; " He found the widow and her daughter at the parsonage house, and desired them to remain there. Some time after a neighbouring clergyman happened to call on him, and " Spence's Anecdotes, (ed. Singer) p. xiii. See the engraving at the end of the 17th chapter of Polymetis. " Eton Register, vol. iv. f. 145. December 23, 1745. U 2 392 THE LIBRARY. found Mrs. Littleton shaving John Burton. He told him that the thing was indecent, and ought to be set to rights. Burton proposed marriage, and was accepted." ' After the death of his wife, Dr. Burton resided chiefly at Eton, and he used to give lessons in divinity at his own house to some of the boys.= Some of his works were published on the spot by Joseph Pote, an enterprising man, best known for his History of Windsor and Registrum Regale? The Eton boys had little sympathy with commercial pursuits, and used to sing : — " Jos Pote of Eton, a man of great renown, Buys a book for sixpence, and sells it for a crown." The Eton press was until lately in the hands of Joseph Pote's descendants, and many members of the family have been educated on the foundation. A good deal of attention was paid to the College Library during the first half of the eighteenth century. The collection of books had not been materially enlarged since the palmy days of Sir Henry Savile, but for some reason, it was resolved in 1720, to build a new Library, octagonal in form, and sur- mounted by a dome, in the brew-house yard, east of the Church. In 1725, this scheme was abandoned in favour of a design by a certain Mr. Rowland, and in the course of the next four years a new building, occupying the whole length of the south- ern side of the cloister, was accordingly erected for the purpose, at a cost of about 4,000/. No attempt was made to imitate the details, or even the general form and style of the original architecture of the College, and the result is far from har- monious. The shelves were scarcely finished, before contri- butions of books, and of money for buying books, began to ' Kippis's Biographia Britan- nica, addenda. ' Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, and Illustrations of Literature ; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xli. p. 305 ; Dictionary oj National Bio- graphy. 3 Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iii. p. 418. ROYAL VISIT IN 1747- 293 pour in, and thus, for the third time in the course of its exist- ence, the library was brought up to the standard of the day." Among the donors of books may be mentioned John, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, Nicholas Mann, Master of the Charter- house, John Reynolds, Henry Godolphin, Provost, and Lord Palmerston. Two Fellows, Thomas Evans and John Reynolds, deserve notice among the benefactors to the College, the former as the donor of the advowson of Hitcham Church, the latter as the founder of three Exhibitions for superannuated Scholars worth about 50/. a-piece. We close this chapter with an extract from a London news- paper of the year 1747 : — ''August nth. King George II. visited the College and School of Eton, when, on a short notice. Master Slater of Bedford, Master Masham of Reading, and Master Williams of London, spoke each a Latin speech (most probably made by their masters) with which his Majesty seemed exceed- ingly well pleased and obtained for them a week's holidays. To the young orators five guineas each had been more ac- ceptable." ^ ' Eton Minute Books ; Willis and I " Rawlinson MS. B. 266, f. 159. Clark, vol. i. pp. 454, 455- I College Plate, hall-marked, 1698 — 1701. ETON LIFE JN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. HERE is an interval of about two hundred years between the date of WiUiam Mahm's Consuetu- dinarium,^ and that of another highly interest- ing manuscript which gives a minute account of the system of education pursued at Eton in the early part of the reign of George III., a system which continued almost unaltered until fifty years ago, and of which many traces remain even in these days of scholastic reform. The document in question was drawn up between the years 1768 and 177s, for Thomas James, an Eton man, who subsequently acquired a great reputation as Head-Master of Rugby.^ As it has never been printed, transcribed, or noticed by any writer, a somewhat lengthy abstract of its contents may legitimately be given here. It reveals a much milder form of discipline than that which prevailed under Malim, one radical difference being that, in ' See Chapter viii. ° It is HOW in the possession of his grandson, the Rev. C. C. James, lately an Assistant iVIaster at Eton. HOURS OF LESSONS. 295 the eighteenth century, the boys prepared their lessons at the boarding-houses, whereas in the sixteenth century all the work was done in school, a change which was due partly to the increased number and reduced price of books, and partly to the introduction of the tutorial system. The general tend- ency of society towards later hours for rising and for going to bed, had naturally affected Eton, but it is not so easy to account for the great extension of the time allowed for re- creation. We find that even in a regular week, Tuesday was a whole holiday, Thursday a half-holiday, and Saturday a ' play-at-four.' On the three stricter working days, the school-hours lasted from eight to nine, from eleven to twelve, from three to four, and from five to six, except that on Friday the first lesson in the afternoon lasted from two to half-past three. It is expressly stated that Fricfay's business was considered "very material," and that it should be interfered with as little as possible. On Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, the boys in the fourth form had to get up earlier than the others, for ' six o'clock school,' which in reality began a little before seven, and lasted about three-quarters-of-an-hour. Thus the fourth form had five regular lessons on a ' whole school-day/ Whole holidays in the eighteenth century were not abridged by early school, as in recent times, and the boys were free to lie in bed later than usual, being only obliged to answer to their names at ' absence ' in the School Yard at nine o'clock. They had to attend Chapel at eleven, and again at three. On half-holidays, the Fifth Form Praepostor used to read prayers in school at noon, and the boys had to be at ' absence ' at two, and at Chapel at three. In summer, ' absence ' was called at six o'clock on all holidays, half-holidays, and ' play- at-fours ; ' in winter, the boarding-houses were locked up at that hour, and the Assistant-Masters went round to call over the names in each house. The half-holiday on Thursday in regular weeks used to be granted by the Provost, at the 296 ETON LIFE IN 1770. request of a member of the sixth form who had done a specially good exercise. The boy who was thus 'sent up for play', was allowed to absent himself from eleven o'-clock school on Thursday, in order to copy out, on gilt-edged paper, the exercise which he had to present to the Provost at noon.' Failing this, Thursday would have been only a ' play-at-four.' On all ' play-at-fours,' except Saturday, the Fifth Form Prae- postor read prayers in school immediately after the three o'clock lesson,^ and then the boys were at liberty for the rest of the afternoon. On Saturday, the only lesson in the after- noon was at two o'clock, and it was followed by Chapel at three. Such was the routine of a regular week, but two regular weeks did not often occur consecutively. All the ordinary arrangements were liable to be thrown out by the occurrence of a red-letter day, inasmuch as each of these festivals was observed as a holiday, and its vigil as a half-holiday. Then, too, there were Founder's days, and Court days (or anni- versaries of the births, marriages, &c., of the principal members of the royal family) which disturbed the week if they fell on any day except Sunday or Tuesday. As some security against excessive interruption of the necessary studies, elaborate rules were made for shifting the ' business ' of the stricter days on to the easier days, though this could not be done to any great extent, as three whole school-days were never allowed to come together, and no school-hour could ever be imposed on Saturday after four o'clock. The Collegers dined at twelve o'clock every day,3 and supped at six on whole school-days, and at five on other days. They assembled in the Hall at seven every night, and ' The three series of Musa: Etonenses have been compiled from these compositions, which are preserved in the Library. " All the prayers in use at Eton at this date are printed in a small volume, entitled — " Preces quoti- diance in usum Scholce Collegii Regalis apud Etonam. 1809." ^' The old grace was sung before and after dinner on Sundays, as at present. SCHEME OF LESSONS. 297 sat there reading for an hour, under the care of the captain of the school. At eight they proceeded to the Lower School, where they recited the prayers, which used, in earlier times, to be recited in the Long Chamber.' They were then locked up for the night. On Sunday morning they went to the Upper School to sing the looth Psalm, and to join in prayers read by the Fifth Form Praepostor. Oppidans and Collegers alike went to church at ten o'clock on Sundays, and they all had to sit in the Upper School between two and three, while a member of the fifth form read aloud four or five pages of the Whole Duty of Man. The afternoon service was at three. On turning to the time-table of the studies pursued throughout the School we find that there \\-as little differ- ence between those of the sixth and fifth forms, which together constituted the Head-Master's division — about 120 boys in all. In a regular week, these two forms had to attend school seventeen times, viz., ten times for construing, and seven times for repetition. The construing-lessons were as follows : — Homer, twice, about 35 lines each time. Lucian, twice, about 40 lines each time. Virgil, twice, about 30 lines each time. Scriptores Romaiii, twice, about 40 lines each time. Poetm GrcBci, about 35 lines. Horace (hexameters) about 60 lines. This Horace, and the double lessons of Homer, Virgil, and PoetcB GrcEci, constituted four of the subjects for repetition. Two of the remaining saying-lessons were taken from the ' These prayers were all in Latin. After a collect, the Lord's Prayer, Versicles and Responses, the Apostles' Creed, the boys sang the hymn beginning r- which occurs in the office of com- pline on double feasts in the Sarum Breviary. This was followed by Versicles and Responses, Collects, and the Prayer of St. Chrysostom " Salvator viundi, Domine, \ from the Church Service. Qid nos servdsti hodie," \ 298 ETON LIFE IN 1770. Selecta ex Ovidio, Tibullo, et Propertio (for the fifth form), or from the Epigramniatum Delectus (for the sixth form), while on Monday morning about twenty verses of the Greek Testament had to be said by heart. At all the repetition lessons, each boy was allowed to go out of school as soon as he had repeated his part. In the summer, between Whitsuntide and Electiontide, the Odes of Horace were construed instead of Lucian, Virgil and the Scriptores Romani, and were moreover, repeated by heart instead of the Selecta ex Ovidio, and the Epigramniatum Delectus. The last week before the summer and winter holidays respectively, was entirely set apart for the study of Greek plays. The boys in the sixth form and those in the upper part of the fifth, had two extra school hours every week all the year round, viz., from nine to ten on Monday and Saturday mornings, when they had to construe about a hundred lines of a Greek play, generally taken from the Pentalogia of John Burton,' or from Aristophanes. At the ordinary lessons, the members of the sixth form were generally called up to construe, before those of the fifth, and it is remarkable that the former had to turn Homer into Latin, instead of into English. The boys in the fifth form were expected to be able to parse the words, and to quote rules in grammar and parallel passages. " The Sixth Form boys, and the Fifth, are supposed to read at their leisure hours. Dr. Middelton's Cicero, Tully's Offices, Ovid's long and short verses, Spectator, etc., Milton, Pope, Roman History, Grecian History, Potter's Ayttiguities, and Kennet's and all other books necessary towards making a compleat scholar." All the boys in the fifth form had to compose three Latin exercises every week, viz., an original theme of not less than twenty lines, a copy of verses of not less than ten elegiac ' The five plays were — (Ediptis I gone, PhosnisscB, and Septem contra Tyrannus, (Edipus Coloneus, Anti- I Thebas. EPIGRAMS. 299 couplets, and five or six stanzas of lyrics on the same subject as the other verses. In the sixth form, the theme and verses were rather longer, and Greek iambic took the place of Latin lyrics. These three exercises were written in play-time, and were shown up to the master at repetition lessons. In irregular weeks, a translation from Latin into English was exacted, as some compensation for work omitted. "If the week be regular, the master sets an extempore theme at three o'clock school [on Monday], and the boys are to make four long and short verses on it in the manner of Martial, like this on oriosvs. " Occurris quocunque loco mihi, Postkume, clamas Protinus, et prima est h(Bc tua vox, ' qiiid agis ? ' Hoc, si tne decies 2ina co)ive?teris Iiora, Dicis ; habes puto tu, Postkume, nil quod agas." BREVITAS. " Si placeat Brevitas, hoc breve carmen habe." ' " If the boys are not able to cut a joke on the theme, they ought by no means to be punished ; however, it will be " Several such epigrams may be seen in the note-book of an old Etonian of the time of the Com- monwealth, now in the Bodleian Library, Rawl. Misc. MS. 762. The following on the respective char- acters of Oxford and Cambridge, occurs on f. 18 : — " Quos vexat sua pauperies, hos excipit J sis ; Non nisi divitibus Chamias unda patet" The two following are transcribed in a manuscript book, in the pos- session of Mr. J. H. Patteson. The first must have been written in the earlier part of the eighteenth century : — Pavne. " Sapere est pari" " Sisapiant taceant alii, Walpole diserte, Nunquam si sapias tu tactiisse velis.'' In the reign of George III. we find— " ^.V NIHILO NIHIL FIT'' "Ex nihilo nil fit, veteres cecinere poeta. Ex NiLO Nelson. Quid,fuit ille nihil?" 30O ETON LIFE IN 1770. right to have an extempore, which must be shewn to the master and read in five o'clock school. " We have Declamations made about a month before every holidays. We have likewise Speeches which are spoken before the school, with the emphasis and proper stress on particular words. These speeches are spoken on Saturday at four o'clock, and no doubt learn the boys to read with propriety. The Declamations are spoken on Saturday, immediately after the business of eleven o'clock school, almost a fortnight before every breaking up. The sixth form boys only speak and declame, and they [are] suffered to skip a whole week's exercises, if they have a Declamation to make, or Speech to get [up]. Our speeches are taken, some from Tully, some from Sallust, and some from Livy, etc." In a regular week, the boys in the Remove construed — ToetcB GrcBci, twice, about 16 lines each time. Virgil, twice, about 30 lines each time. Horace {Odes), twice. Pomponius Mela twice. Cornelius Nepos once. They had two repetition lessons in Greek Grammar, one in Virgil, Horace, and Poetce Graci respectively, and two lessons in Geography. They had to draw a map every week, in addition to their theme, elegiac verses, and lyrics. In a regular week, the boys in the Fourth Form con- strued — Farnaby's Delectus, three times, about 12 lines each time. Ovid's Metamorphoses, twice, about 25 lines each time. Electa ex Ovidio, &c., twice, about 16 lines each time. ^sop, twice. Caesar, twice. Terence, twice. Greek Testament, about 12 verses. They had three repetition lessons in Greek Grammar, and SCHEME OF LESSONS. 301 one each in Greek Testament, Ovid, and the Electa. They had to compose two sets of elegiac verses, not less than six couplets each time, and an extempore of two couplets, and to translate into Latin six sentences from Willymott's Peculiars. The studies of the boys of the Lower School need not be given in detail. In ' Upper Greek ' and ' Lower Greek,' the books used were — the Latin Testament, Selecta e Pi-ofanis, Ovid, Terence, the Church Catechism in Latin, and the Greek Grammar. In ' Sense ' and ' Nonsense,' the work was very similar, but the lessons were shorter, and Terence was omitted. The names of these divisions indicate the character of the verses written by the boys. In the Second Form, the books studied were Latin Testa- ment, Catechism, Grammar, and Phaedrus. In the First Form, nothing was learnt except Latin Grammar. In addition to learning the lessons enumerated above, all the boys had to repair to the School from ten to eleven ■ o'clock and from two to three, on holidays, and from two to three on half-holidays. During these hours, the younger boys were exercised in writing, and in arithmetic, while some of the fifth form were learning Geography,' or Algebra. Those who stayed at Eton long enough, went through part of Euclid, and thus, in our author's opinion, could proceed to College " compleat scholars." The following passage is very characteristic : — " When boys are removed from one form to another, we have a custom of trying them in the books they have already learned, and in such sort of exercises as they have been used to make. If their tryal is satisfactory, they are advanced with glory ; if otherwise, kept back to their, shame. ' The authors read for geography I Nepos, Cellarius, and Salmon, were — Pomponius Mela, Cornelius I 302 -ETON LIFE IN 1770. The time allowed for trying boys for their removes is not to be in a school hour, but at some hour which the Master shall appoint on a holyday. In all the different removes made in the forms .... these tryals will be necessary to raise emulation in the boys. " If boys gain their removes with honour, we have a good custom of rewarding each with a shilling, if high in the school 2s.6d., which is given them by the Dames, and placed to the father's account, who, no doubt, will be glad to pay that which may conduce so much to the improvement of his son's learning and application. The same custom obtains, when a boy distinguishes himself by a good exercise, or wins a place. " In order to encourage the industry of boys, the Master now and then gives a book to a boy who excells (sic), and takes much pains with his exercise. This [is] a great help towards encouraging diligence and ambition. Sometimes a boy looses {sic) a place through idleness. The boys in the lower part of the school are encouraged in challenging one another for places. When this happens, the Master tries both, and judges of their performances, and accordingly determines." " The vacations are three times in a year, Easter, Christmas, and August, vulgarly called Bartlcmetide — a most strange corruption from St Bartholomew's name. The Christmas holydays last a month, and the School breaks up the 2nd Monday in December, about the loth, I2th, 14th, or 15th day of the month. The I'Laster holidays last a fortnight, and the School breaks up on the Monday before Easter Sunday. Our Task at Ea.ster is some short chapter of Jeremiah, which is to be turned into Long Verses, or Long and Short Verses, or Asclepiads, or Alcaics, or whatever metre the boys chuse ; many of which Tasks beg half holydays, if the boys take pains with them. The holydays at August (at which time you may try the uppermost in Funebres Orationes, and fit them for College) begin the first Monday in August and last a month. " Prepostors or monitors arc chosen for this purpose, viz. PR.EPOSTORS. 303 to gather exercises, to mark the boys' names every School time, and Church time, to write down the names of those boys who are not present at the time of absence. When these Prepostors, five in number (one to every form, except the Sixth, which [shall] be spoken of particularly) find any boys missing, they inquire about the reason of their absence at the Dames who keep the Boarding houses, and bring an excuse for [it] in the Dame's handwriting, in this manner. 'James, a cold, Mary Naylor.' These Prepostors let the Master know likewise, if any boy after confinement for some disorder ' returns into the School at any particular School hour. " The Sixth Form hath two Prepostors (one of the Upper, and another for the Lower School). . . . The Upper Prepostor calls over the boys' names at absence, delivers the rod to the Master, when he punishes a boy, at the same time one or two of the other Prepostors attend to assist at exeaition. The Upper Prepostor walks round the School to keep the boys quiet in eleven o'clock school, and five o'clock school. The Lower Prepostor does the same in eight o'clock school and three. These Prepostors, chosen weekly, take it by turns to attend the six o'clock [lesson] in the summer when the Lower School go in, in order to keep them quiet. The fifth form Prepostor, winter and summer, attends six o'clock lesson to say the prayers. These Prepostors are chosen weekly. The sixth form Prepostors only are excused the business of the School during the time of their office." The Fifth Form Praepostor read prayers at the end of the last school time of every day. " There are certain bounds fixed to the School, and the whole sixth form can have any boy punished, if they [find] him beyond these bournds. They can likewise have a boy [punished] for not making his own exercise, swearing, ' " Staying out" cancelled in the MS. 304 ETON LIFE IN 1766. drinking, or any other fault ; which power granted to them has been one great means of preserving regularity." ' Having thus noticed the principal contents of the manu- script which describes the studies and discipline of Eton School about the year 1770, we may turn for further in- formation to another manuscript drawn up by some boy, in 1765 or 1766, and entitled NugcB Etonenses.^ Omitting any irreverent mention of the Provost, the Felloivs, or the Head- Master, it begins with a list of the names and nicknames of the Usher and the Assistant Masters : — " Perny-pojax Dam pier, Gronkey Graham, Fogy Roberts, Cat Edwards, Skimmer-jack Norbury, Buck Ekins, Mazzard Heath, Barber Davi[e]s, Bantam Sumner, Wigblock Prior." There were also three writing-masters, of whom two^Evans and Hardy — kept boarding-houses. French was taught, out of school hours of course, by Lemoine and Porny, the latter the author of a popular book on heraldry, in which many of the examples were taken from the Arms of his pupils at Eton. 3 There was a dancing-school conducted by Hickford, and a fencing-school under the management of Henry Angelo, by whose family a school of arms was maintained at Eton until a few years ago. The teacher of drawing was Alexander Cozens, a natural son of Peter the Great, and one of the founders of the English school of painting in water-colours. ■» ' According to Jeremia,h Milles's pamphlet (see next chapter) the monitorial power was vested only in the first seven Collegers, and the first ten Oppidans. - It belonged to the late Rev. J. C. B. Riddell. The date is fixed by allusions to " Dr. Barnard's fare- well speech'' (see p. 315) and the removal of the clock (see p. 309) on the one hand, and en the other by the mention among the Masters of Dampier, who was elected Fellow 1767. 3 Porny's real name was Antoine Pyron du Martre. He lived to a consid6ra,ble age, and devoted his sa,vings to the establishment of a free school at Eton for sixty boys and thirty girls. See Knight's Passages of a Working Life, vol. i. pp. 68, 69, 74. ■t Dictionary of National Bio- graphy. POPULAR GAMES. 305 There were thirteen boarding-houses, of which three were kept by men styled " Domines," and the remainder by " Dames " of the other sex. In the hst of tradesmen patronised by the boys occur the names of Pote, the bookseller, and Thomas and Roger Payne, the eminent bookbinders. A gunsmith, a spur-maker, and a fishing-tackle maker, rendered valuable services to those who were addicted to out-door sports. The landlord, the tapster, and the waiter of the ' Christopher,' were apparently familiar to most, as were also the four coffee-house keepers. Charters, Jones, Ramlet, and Layton, and eleven other worthies who sold fruit, sweetmeats, and the like. A list of games in vogue gives the names of several which are not mentioned in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes : — " Cricket, Fives, Shirking Walls, Scrambling Walls, Bally Cally, Battledores, Peg-top, Peg in the ring. Goals, Hop- scotch, Heading, Conquering Lobs, Hoops, Marbles, Trap ball. Steal baggage. Puss in the corner. Cut Gallows, Kites, Cloyster and Flyer Gigs, Tops, Humming-tops, Hunt the hare. Hunt the dark lanthorn. Chuck, Sinks, Starecaps, Hurtlecap.'' The game of ' goals ' was probably played in the ' football fields,' which are mentioned in another part of the manu- script ; and ' heading ' may be an old expression for taking ' headers.' There were certainly bathing-places at " Sandy hole, Cuckow ware (sic), Head pile. Pope's hole. Cotton's hole. South hope, and Dickson's hole." The three long boats were called Piper's Green, Snake, and My Guineas Lion, the third of which evidently took its name from ' Guinea ' Piper a celebrated waterman of the day, while the first must have belonged to one of his relations, Dick or Jack Piper.' Within a small radius of the College, the boys could go to ' English Spy, vol. i. p. 93. The i charged on the 4th of June is still island in tha Thames from which I called " Piper's Eyot." the fireworks are annually dis- | 3o6 DIVERSIONS FROM STUDY. see a criminal called Watkins, hanging in chains, or at stated times they could witness pony races at Datchet, at Chalvey, and in South Meadow. If they wished to accomplish longer distances, they could hire horses and ride to Sunning Hill, Gerard's Cross, Cranford Bridge, Maidenhead Bridge, or — rarest treat of all — to Ascot races. They could play billiards at Lawrington's or Sibson's, and tennis at Jermyn's, and they could occasionally see cock-fighting in Bedford's Yard, and bull-baiting in Bachelor's Acre. If, however, they remained absent beyond a reasonable time, they were liable to be brought back to Eton ignominiously, by Jack Cutler, the " Pursuivant of Runaways," or by one of his four assistants, — functionaries who ranked with the College gardener, the clock-winder, and the rod-maker. view from Earne's Pool Bridge. ■ p ^ ^^^a ^ j v jE S ^ r: ^ ^ iCHAPTER^ VfiSiS Hakewill's History of Windsor, p. 22. EDWARD BARNARD. 311 Horace Walpolesays :— " Dr. Barnard, the Master, is the Pitt of masters, and has raised the school to the most flourishing state it ever knew." ' Barnard overcame several attempts at rebellion with the vigour and tact of a statesman. Thus it was that in less than eleven years, the number of boys at Eton rose from about 300 to over 500, while the rival school at Westminster made little or no progress in public estima- tion. Two additional Masters were appointed in 1755, and two more in 1760, the whole number being thus raised to ten.^ A MS. List of Eton School taken at Election 1766, now preserved at Belvoir Castle, gives the names of the Head- Master, the Lower Master, ten Assistants, and 498 boys, of whom fifty are marked in red ink as Noblemen, noblemen's sons, or baronets. The surnames of noblemen's sons are prefixed with the word ' Mr.' instead of ' Hon.', according to the system which still prevails at Eton. Barnard is said to have possessed in an eminent degree the power of discerning the character of those under his care, admiring genius and spirit even when they did not run in the ordinary groove. When Sir John Macdonald, " the young Marcellus of his day," joined the School, he was utterly unskilled in the art of Latin versification, the crucial test of Eton scholarship, but Barnard at once placed him at the top of his form, saying to the other boys : — " I am going to put over your heads a boy who cannot write a verse, and I do not care whether he will ever be a poet or no, but I will trust him in your hands ; for I know my boys, and how generous they are to merit." This confidence was well founded, and Macdonald soon proved that he could hold his own in writing verses, as well as in other branches of learning.3 Barnard had a brilliant, if wayward, pupil in Charles ' Letters of Horace Walpole, (ed. Cunningham) vol. iv. p. 32. ' Sloane MS. 4843, f, 461. 3 Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. pp. 543—551- 312 CHARLES JAMES FOX. James Fox, who owed many of the defects in his character to the evil influence of his father. Lord Chatham once said that he considered the elder Fox " the blackest man that ever lived He educated his children without the least regard to morality, and with such extravagant vulgar indulgence, that the great change which has taken place among our youth has been dated from the time of his son's going to Eton." ' When Charles James Fox was only fifteen years of age, he was taken away from school for four months, and introduced to the dissipated society of Paris and Spa. He returned to Eton with the ideas and airs of a man of fashion, but he was laughed at by the boys, and soundly flogged by the Head- Master.^ After this, he became more careful about his work, and attained such proficiency in Latin versification as to be ' sent up.' 3 His great talents were appreciated at this early period, not only by Dr. Barnard,'* but by the young Earl of Carlisle, who addressed him in the following manner, in some lines on the probable future of several of his school-fellows : — " How will my Fox, alone, from strength of parts Shake the loud senate, animate the hearts Of fearful statesmen, while around you stand Both Peers and Commons list'ning your command : While Tully's sense its weight to you affords, His nervous sweetness shall adorn your words ; What praise to Pitt, to Townshend, e'er was due. In future times, my Fox, shall wait on you." s ' Lord E. Fitzmaurice's Life of Lord Shelburne, vol. i. p. 78. ^ Lord Russell's Memorials of C. J. Fox, vol. i. pp. II — 12. 3 See the Musa Etonenses. ■• Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. p. 547. 5 Foundling Hospital for Wit, (1784) vol. i. p. 7. Several cir- cumstances combine to show that these verses were written while the author and his friends were still at Eton. Lord Offaly died prema- turely in 1765, and a political allusion to the rivalry between Bute and Temple would have been meaningless after that year. Lord Carlisle's verses and the answer to them by Bertie Greathead, are mentioned in the MS. entitled Nuga Etonenses, as almost con- temporaneous with Dr. Barnard's farewell speech. JAMES HARE. 313 The other young Etonians noticed in this poem, were St. John, Lord FitzwiUiam, the Duke of Buccleuch, Legge, the Earl of Offaly, Lord Stavordale, and Anthony Morris Storer, but we miss in it the name of James Hare, one of the most popular members of that coterie, and the author of several clever compositions in the Musce Etonenses. When Fox was congratulated on his maiden speech in the House of Commons, he said : — " Wait till you hear Hare ; " ' but the subject of this compliment had little political ambition, and was satisfied with being the " Hare with many friends." A few days after his death, in March 1804, there appeared, in one of the London newspapers, an amusing biographical notice signed Leporis Amator, from which we may extract the following: — "Mr. H is sent, in 1764,=^ to Eton, by his uncle, and admitted a colleger, — is soon distinguished as a boy of con- siderable parts, and taken great notice of by Lord Carlisle, Mr. Fox, the Duke of Buccleugh, Lord Ilchester, Lord Ophaly, Lord FitzwiUiam, and all the noblemen who admired quick parts, easy manners, and ready wit. These honours gave him an air of consequence superior to the pretensions of a Colleger, and attracted the envy of the Master, who was resolved to cut him short in his career, and for that purpose dock'd his long hair with his own hand ; telling him on his showing signs of indignation, that he might think himself well off that the operation was not performed according to the statutes by a bowl-dish. He resented this, and prepared no Bacchus at Christmas, but wrote a beautiful poem on the subject of Cain and Abel, which was admired by the Cooks, ^nd all the ladies of the Fellows ; he was obliged, however, to write a Latin Bacchus at a night's notice. ^ — goes to the ball at Windsor, and dances with Mrs. Lyne,^ and his friend Mr. F 1 with Dr. Biddle's ' Annual Register, vol. xlvi. p. 473- ^ This date is obviously wrong, as Hare's name appears in a Bitl of Eton School of 1762, and he was elected to King's in 1765. 3 Probably a relation of Richard Lyne, one of the Fellows. * Fox. 314 FLOGGINGS. niece.' This is considered as an unparalleled outrage, and noticed accordingly but differently, by a threat of expulsion to the one, and a hope to the other that he was not going to be irregular." ^ Hare himself alludes to the Head-Master's birch in a poem preserved in the Muscb Etonenses : — " Suggerit ilia rudi nunieros, et dulcia vati Carmina, viminea miisa juvatur ope!' And again, addressing Barnard in his " Vale" of 1766, he says : — " Auspice te, viridi certavit betula lauro, At sine te vilis, ceu prius, arbor erit!' 3 Dr. Barnard's free use of the scissors as well as of the birch is noticed by Christopher Anstey in his account of " Master Marmozet Danglecub " : — " Mrs. Danglecub's not such a fool To send a poor thing with a spirit so meek. To be flogg'd by a tyrant for Latin and Greek ; For why should a child of distinction and fashion Lay a heap of such silly nonsensical trash in .' She wonders that parents to Eton should send Five hundred great boobies their manners to mend, When the master that's left it (though no one objects To his care of the boys in all other respects) Was extremely remiss, for a sensible man, In never contriving some elegant plan For improving their persons, and showing them how To hold up their heads, and to make a good bow, When they've got such a charming long room for a ball, Where the scholars might practise, and masters and all ; But what is much more, what no parent would chuse — He burnt all their ruffles and cut off their queues." * ' Miss Cook. I 3 Musa Etonenses, vol. i. p. 210. ° St. James's Chronicle, March [ ■• Anstey's New Bath Guide, (ed. 29, 1804. ; 1784) p. 103. THOMAS DAM PIER. 315 Thomas Dampier seems to have maintained the reputation of the Lower School fairly well, though from all accounts he must have been somewhat weak and indulgent. A boy under him, fonder of cricket than of Latin and Greek, boasted that he was sure of getting his remove : — " Dampier loves a good glass of wine, I'll write to my father to send him a hamper of claret, and mark, if I do not soon swim into the Upper School." ' One of the Brudenells climbed up one of the pillars in the Lower School, and from this lofty perch, set the Usher at defiance for half an hour, until at last he was pulled down by the prspostors and " birch-desk keeper." " There is a less credible story of a boy named Frank North having a fair set- to with Dr. Dampier in Windsor Castle, and rolling him down the Hundred Steps. ^ Upon the death of Dr. Sleech, in October 1765, a royal mandate was issued requiring the Fellows to elect the Head- Master, Edward Barnard, as Provost. Some difficulty, however, arose out of the fact that the King's nominee had never been a Fellow of Eton or of King's, and there was an idea of electing Dr. William Cooke instead. Eventually the living authority of George HI. was recognised to be paramount in the matter, and " the conclave ended in the submission of a royal College to rOyal pleasure." '^ To prevent any derange- ment of work, Barnard continued to act as Head-Master for some weeks after his election as Provost, and when, at the end of the school term, he took leave of the boys, they were moved to unwonted tears.s John Foster, one of the Assistants, 'who was appointed to succeed Barnard as Head-Master,^ had many qualifications ' Angelo's Reminiscences, vol. i. pp. Ill, 112. " MS. called Nuga Etonenses, lately in the possession of the Rev. J. C. B. Riddell. 3 English Spy, vol. i. p. gi. * Tenth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, Appendix I. p. 397. 5 Eighth Report of the Historical MSS. Commission, K^^^xiAk^ II. p. 118. ^ Eton Register, vol. iv. f. 201, December 16, 1765. 3i6 JOHN FOSTER. for the post, and great things were expected of him. He is said to have been the "boast of Eton during his education there," and, as a man, he was not less respected for the uprightness of his character, than noted for the soundness of his scholarship. A writer of his own time says : — " He was a lover of that virtue which he taught and practised ; and whatever in ancient or modern history was calculated to cherish a spirit of social duty, and a sensej unbending rectitude, he never failed to impress on the minds of his scholars, and to suggest as the subject of their exercises. Indeed his zeal in these great points of education could not be excelled. . . . His memory was great, and, joined to a clear and firm intellect, prevented any embarrass- ment in his ideas from the great extent of his reading. He was a strict disciplinarian, severe against all immoral conduct, inexorable when he discovered meditated de- ception, and [he] considered the deviation from truth to be an act of baseness which it would be equally wrong to pass without correction, as to commit." ' Under some circumstances, such a man might have become a most successful educator of youth, but it was Foster's misfortune to succeed a master who had been almost idolized by those under him. The contrast between Barnard and Foster was most marked, and persons more discriminating than mere schoolboys, might well be pardoned for preferring the brilliant genius of the former to the quiet virtues of the latter. In all points of classical scholarship Foster was infi- nitely superior to his predecessor, but he had not the same acquaintance with the literature of his own age and country. Barnard loved to spend his leisure time in genial society, while Foster was poring over the elaborate dissertations of some dry commentator. One was satisfied with grasping the ideas and characteristics of ancient writers, whereas the other insisted on ascertaining the exact force of every word employed, and was the author of a learned Essay on ' Lipscomb's History of Bucks, vol. iv. pp. 496, 497. REBELLION IN 17 6S. 317 the different natures of Accent and Qjiaiitity. Barnard was ever causing merriment by his ready wit ; Foster by his blunders, as for instance, when he mistook a black sow under the wall of the Long Walk for a small boy shirking, and called out " Come here, you Colleger ! " ' Even in outward appearance there was a great difference between the two men, for Barnard was tall and dignified, while Foster was small and insignificant. It would have been well for the School if the contrast had stopped here ; but it soon became evident that the new Master was deficient in that kind of tact for which his predecessor had been so distinguished. The most serious rebellion that is ever known to have occurred at Eton, was brought about, in a great measure, by his want of discretion. It originated in a controversy on the subject of 'bounds,' between the Assistant-Masters and the Sixth Form Prsepostors." These latter exercised monitorial authority over their schoolfellows, and, as in later times, had power to punish any lower boys whom they met outside the precincts of the College. This naturallj'' implied an exemption for themselves from observing the ordinary limits, though as a matter of form they used to 'shirk' the Assistant-Masters. In the autumn of 1768, however, the Masters claimed the right of sending sixth-form boys back to College, a claim which was strenuously resisted. All Dr. Foster's attempts at pacification proved vain, and affairs were brought to a crisis by a casual rencofitre between one of the Masters and a Praepostor in the main street of Eton, one Saturday afternoon. No words passed at the time, but when the Praepostor was performing his ordinary duty of keeping the lower boys quiet in Church, on the following afternoon, he received a message to the effect ' MS. called Nuga Etonenses. I legers, and the first ten Oppidans, - Thev \\'ere the first seven Col- I in the School. 31 8 REBELLION IN 1768. that the Master intended to -complain of him for making a noise. Feeling deeply aggrieved, he determined to ascertain whether the accusation was due to misappre- hension, or to a mean spirit of revenge, and therefore lost no time, when service was over, in asking for an explanation of the ■ message. The Master vouchsafed no reply, but collared him, and dragged him perforce to Dr. Foster, who was about to administer punishment, when the Sixth Form Praepostors entered the room in a body, threatening to resign their duties, if their privileges were to be thus infringed. This bold device proved unsuccessful, for their resignation was accepted, and their comrade was severely flogged. On the following day, the ex-Praepostors had an interview with the Head-Master, at which they claimed that the Assistants should have no right to send them back to College, unless they found them in taverns, billiard-rooms, or other improper places, in which event they were willing to be sent back, and even to be flogged. Dr. Foster refused to entertain the proposition, whereupon the boys vowed that they would not take part in the ensuing Declamations, for declaiming belonged to them as Praepqstors and not as members of the sixth form. Foster retorted that they must either declaim at the proper time, or leave the School ; and when a deputation of fifth-form Oppi- dans came to enquire whether the sixth-form boys had been expelled, he answered curtly : — " Go and ask them." After this, a council of war was held in the Playing Fields, and all the members of the sixth form, many of the fifth, and some even of the fourth — a hundred and sixty in all — resolved to start at once for Maidenhead. The author of an apology for the boys boasts of their good conduct : — ■ " They marched with the greatest order and regularity, and . . during the whole time they were absent from REBELLION IN 1768. 319 Eton, there was not one single act of riot, indecency, or intemperance, committed The Master behaved with the warmth of youth ; the boys with the prudence of a more advanced age. The boys desired either to be convinced, or to convince the Master by reason ; the Master refused both. The boys behaved with a resolute constancy; the Master with an injudicious obstinacy, and wavering timidity." ' On the other hand, tradition says that all the rebels threw their school-books into the Thames — a sadly childish pro- ceeding on the part of such would-be heroes.^ Be this as it may, we find that they spent the night at Marsh's inn, 3 despite the remonstrances of a friendly Master who rode over to advise them to return at once. On the following mornirig, they marched back to the Playing Fields, and eighteen of them had a conference with the Masters in the Upper School ; they offered to capitulate on condition that all should be treated alike, but Dr. Foster declared that he would make no conditions. This announcement caused a regular panic, and Sauve qui pent became the order of the day. The writer • The pamphlet was printed anonymously, but the copy in the Bodleian Library bears the name of Jeremiah Milles as the author. This Jeremiah Milles was the eldest son of the Dean of Exeter, an Etonian, and he afterwards became a Fellow of Merton College. He took his B.A. degree in 1772, so that it is quite possible that he may have been at Eton in 1768. Angelo {Reminiscences, ^o\. i. p. 116) says that the chief ringleader was named Webster. " The English Spy, vol. i. p. 92 ; Biographic Universelle, vol. Ixvi. p. 95- 5 An original MS. in the pos- session of the late Rev. J. C. B. Riddell is endorsed: — "Bill at Maidenhead Bridge for the enter- tainment of the boys concerned in the Eton Rebellion, 2nd Nov. 1768." The items are — " Beer for dinner 126 Wine and punch, etc. 6 18 6 Dinners, coffee, tea, etc., supper and breakfast for 160 at 5 J. a head 40 Beer at supper Wine and punch, etc. Fires Cards o 18 14 o 4 55 18 3 " November the 2ncl and 3rd, 17G8." See also Saturday Review, vol. xliv. p. 213. 320 KEBELLION IN 176S. already quoted records with indignation that three of the ringleaders, " to their eternal infamyj made peace at the expense of their own honour." ' Many of their comrades followed this example, while others more deeply implicated, or more timid, hastened away to their own homes — only to encounter the reproaches of their indignant parents. William Grenville, afterwards Prime Minister, was sent back to Eton for a few hours — probably to be flogged — and was then taken away from the School.^ Lord Harrington's son swore a solemn oath that he would not submit, and went up to London ; but his father would only speak to him through the door, insisting on his immediate return to Eton. " Sir," said the son, " consider, I shall be d^ ^d if I do." "And I," answered the father, "will be d d if you don't." "Yes, my Lord," retorted this dutiful son, " but you will be d d whether I do or not." 3 The two sons of the Marquess of Granby met with a warmer reception, and were asked whether they would like to go to the theatre that evening. The offer seemed too good to be true, but they accepted it with alacrity. " Yes," said the sturdy general, who had himself experienced the discipline of Eton, "you shall go there to-night for your own pleasure, and to-morrow you shall return to Dr. Foster and be flogged for mine." "* Traditions of a great battle between the Eton boys and the butchers at Windsor, some six or seven years before the rebellion of 1768, were current in the School in the early part of the present century, but they have passed away with a by- gone generation. Henry Angelo, the celebrated fencing- master, mentions that many of the boys got back to College only by dressing themselves up like women, as the foe had secured Windsor Bridge, and so cut off their retreat.^ ' Jeremiah Milles. " Biographie Universelle, vol. Ixvi. p. 95. ^ English Spy, vol. i. p. 92. * Angelo's Reminiscences, vol. i. pp. 116, 117. s Ibid. vol. ii. p. 298. The battle, and the verses on the occasion, are mentioned in the M'S. entitled NugcE Etonenses. JOHN FOSTER. 321 The same writer has preserved a fuller account of a remarkable incident which took place during his school days, and of which he was an eye-witness. He and other fags were engaged in preparing their masters' tea one Sunday evening after church, when a messenger came to summon them all to the Upper School. They found Dr. Foster and his Assistants awaiting them there, and, as the boys came pouring in from the different houses, intense curiosity prevailed as to what was about to happen. When all were assembled, the block was brought in from the ' Library,' and an imperative voice shouted " Burke ! " A burly Irish boy of about eighteen came forward and knelt down to be flogged, amid solemn silence. When the Doctor had administered three cuts, he bade him stand up again, and said — " Now, I expel you the School." The boys were more perplexed than ever, but they subsequently ascertained that Burke had been lampooning the Head-Master in the London newspapers, and that he would not have submitted quietly to a flogging if he had known that it would be followed by expulsion. Angelo says "such a disgraceful exposure was never before exhibited in the middle of the School." ' We may easily believe that stringent measures of this kind were sometimes necessary for the maintenance of discipline, but it seems clear that Foster used to carry his severity beyond the limits of prudence. Being unable to control the boys by his personal influence, he had recourse to a system of terrorism, which soon rendered him extremely unpopular. The fact that he was the son of a Windsor tradesman was, in itself, enough to raise a prejudice against him in the minds of his aristocratic pupils, who took no pains to hide the contempt they entertained for his person and authority.' One consequence of this unhappy state of aff'airs was, that the number of boys in the School declined even more rapidly ' Angelo's Reminiscences, vol. ii. 1 " Lipscomb's History of Bucks, pp. 376, 377. I vol. iv. pp. 496, 497. Y 322 ROYAL VISIT IN 1778. than it had risen under Barnard's management. In eight years the total fell from 522 to 230, and Foster, broken down in health and spirits, resigned his place in 1773, at the age of forty-one.' Jonathan Davies, a man of humble birth, succeeded him as Head-Master, and ruled the School for eighteen years with moderate success. The election of 1778 was remarkable for the number of distinguished visitors who came to Eton to hear the speeches on the Monday. The royal children arrived about noon in three carriages, preceded by twelve running footmen. The King and Queen followed " in their own post-chariot" and drove into the School Yard, where they were received by two of the Fellows, and the Head-Master and Usher, the Provost being laid up with an attack of the gout. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord North, and other distinguished persons were assembled in the Upper School, and no time was lost in proceeding to the business of the day. Lord Wellesley, one of the senior Oppidans, enjoyed the exceptional honour of making two recitations, the latter of which. Lord Strafford's last speech, he delivered with such pathos as to draw tears from the whole audience. The Prince of Wales and the Bishop of Osnaburg, we are told, " took most affectionate notice of all the speakers, shaking hands with them several times." The royal party proceeded from the Upper School to the Church, and thence to the Long Chamber, where every Scholar stood by his own bedside. They afterwards went to the Lodge, to see Dr. Barnard in his bedroom, and the King on taking leave said that this should not be his last visit to the College.^ A holiday was observed in several succeed- ing years in commemoration of the day, although not on the actual anniversary.3 After the speeches, the Archbishop of " Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. iv. p. 342. ^ Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xlviii. p. 385 ; Additional MS. 5868, f. 39, b. quoting Cambridge . Chronicle of August i, 1778. 3 MS. Diary of Dr. Davies, in the possession of the Provost. THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 323 Canterbury took Lord Wellesley with him to spend part of the summer holidays at Lambeth, and on their way they called on David Garrick at Hampton. " Your Lordship," said the great tragedian to Lord Wellesley, " has done what I could never accomplish — made the King weep." " That," replied the hero of the morning with equal courtesy, "is because you never spoke before him in the character of a fallen favourite." ' Lord Wellesley's younger brother, Arthur Wellesley, thrashed ' Bobus ' Smith in a iight at Eton, but did little else to attract the attention of his schoolfellows. As Duke of Wellington, he has been credited with a remark that " the Battle of Waterloo was won in the Playing-Fields," meaning that he and many of his brother officers had in their boyish games developed qualities which proved valuable in later years. Whether or not he ever uttered these words, there is contemporary record of his having said something of the sort on the occasion of a very brief visit to Eton in January 181 8. He came one morning unexpectedly, to see his two sons who were then at school under the charge of a private tutor, boarding at Ragueneau's house, the site of which is now occupied by that of Mr. Arthur James. " He went all over the house, and visited the room which he had occupied when at school. He looked into the garden, and asked what had become of the broad black ditch over which he used so often to leap. He said : ' I really believe I owe my spirit of enterprise to the tricks I used to play in the garden.' He remembered the name of ' Virgins' bower,' which used to be given to the room next the kitchen where the maids slept. He thought there was a way through it, and said he was going that way. He seemed in high spirits, and when the cook was calling all the servants to go out to see the Duke, he stopped her, as she was going into the kitchen, by saying : ' The Duke is coming to s&e you. ' " ' Jesse's Memoirs of the Reign of George III., vol. iii. p. 16. 324 RICHARD PORSON. A few boys who were in the School Yard cheered him as he went to call on Dr. Goodall, and he ended by asking for a holiday.' A portrait of him, painted in manhood, hangs in the Provost's Lodge. There was once a debating society at Eton, in which the members assumed the titles and parts of the ministers of state and their principal opponents ; and it was in this mock Parliament that Lord Wellesley and Henry Grey made their first political speeches.^ The former excelled all his con- temporaries at school in writing Latin verses, an art which he continued to practise in his old age ; 3 and Goodall de- scribed him, before a committee of the House of Commons, as a much better classic scholar, in all respects, than Richard Porson, who was more remarkable at Eton for the power of his memory than for the correctness of his compositions. According to a well-known story, Porson, being called up in a Horace lesson when he had mislaid his book, borrowed an Ovid from a neighbour, and with this in his hand construed the Horace without a mistake. He was by no means an enthusiastic Etonian, and in after life, he used to look back to the rat hunts in Long Chamber with greater pleasure than to any other incident of his schooldays. He preferred English to Latin composition, and it was in the former' language that he addressed some anonymous lines to Charles Simeon, apostrophising him as "the ugliest boy in Dr. Davies's dominions." He also wrote two dramatic pieces for re- presentation in Long Chamber, one of which, entitled Out of the frying pan into the fire, has been preserved in manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge. The actors were Stephenson, Chafie, Goodall, Moore, and Porson himself* Some Oppidans also had a taste for theatricals, but they ' MS. Diary in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate. Cf. Angelo's Reminiscences, vol. ii. pp. 1 06, 107. ^ rublic Characters, A.D. 1803 — 1804, p. 426. 3 See his Primitice et ReliquicE. ■' Watson's Life of Porson, pp. 18 — 26 ; Beloe's Sexagenariati, vol. i. p. 215. THEATRICALS. 325 were not so ambitious as to attempt originaF pieces. When Barnard was Head-Master, arrangements were made for a performance of Addison's Cato at one of the boarding-houses, and numerous invitations were issued. A disreputable old wig was procured for the occasion, and was done up by the barber, on condition that he should be allowed to see it on Cato's head. The first few scenes were greatly applauded, and George Hardinge, the hero, was holding forth in his best manner, when the door opened, and revealed the well-known form of the Head-Master. Everybody fled, except the patriot Cato, who had to submit to the indignity of being stripped of his wig and gown. Barnard was vastly amused by the incident, and kept the wig in his room as a trophy ; until one day the Vice-Provost, John Burton, recognised it as a discarded one of his own, and carried it off for future use, declaring that the barber had made it as good as new. Perhaps Barnard would not have cared to stop the per- formance if he had been invited, for he was a great admirer of the drama. George Hardinge says : — " If nature had given him Garrick's features and figure, he would have been scarce inferior to him in theatrical powers. He was an admirable mimic, but he was never, like that wonderful man, an actor off the stage. . . . His forte was a picturesque anatomy of character Mr. Bryant once told me that he was present at a wonderful illustration of his powers in satire. He was in company with an overbearing and impudent savage, who, conceiving effrontery to be a match for genius, was often rudely offensive to him. Barnard in high good humour took an opportunity of describing the man by another name, and, lest the portrait should be too marked, he gave the hero of his portrait a nose that was aquiline. The curious brute was observed by the rest in the act of tracing his features, to discover if the nose corresponded." ' ' Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. viii. pp. 543 — 551. 326 SAMUEL FOOTE. As Provost, Barnard indulged his wit too freely, some- times allowing it to degenerate into buffoonery. He loved to associate with men of genius akin to his own, and Foote, the great comedian, was often his guest, rendering valuable assistance whenever there were private theatricals at the Lodge, entertainments in which some of the scholars generally took part' Foote, having been conducted round the College by a party of boys, asked his young ciceroni what he could do for them in return. " Tell us, Mr. Foote," said the leader, " the best thing you ever said." " Why," replied he, " I saw a little blackguard imp of a chimney-sweeper, mounted on a noble steed, prancing and curveting in all the pride and magnificence of nature. ' There,' said I, ' goes Warburton on Shakespeare.' " ^ ' Angelo's Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 416. Forster's Essay on Foote. Pump in the Cloister. 1781 — iSog. William Hayward Roberts — Jonathan Davies — John Langford — Anecdotes of George lll.—The Microcosm— George Canning— The i^fz«za^z/r«— Cricket— Boating— George Heath and Joseph Goodall —Benefactions— Condition of the Collegers. NOTICES of Eton, and of the principal members of the College, at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, are scantier than one would naturally expect. Thus there is little to be recorded about William Hayward Roberts, who was elected Provost in 1781, at the comparatively early age of forty-eight, beyond the fact that he had been a Fellow for several years, and before that an Assistant-Master. He was the author of a long poem, entitled /« Neu, si te parvus gessit per rura caballus, Et per nostra humiles prata tulere rotes, Excelso in curru moderare infirmus habenas ; Neu quid Etonensi crede caducus equo" ^ This open allusion to driving and riding would suffice to show that those exercises were then in vogue at Eton. Else- ' Annual Register, vol. xl. p. 50. ' Reminiscences of an Etonian [by H. C. Blake], p. 57. 3 Lipscomb's History of Bucks, vol. iv. p. 487. vol. i. p. 98. ^ Reminiscences of an Etonian, p. 86. 5 Ibid. p. 54. * Musce Etonenses, New Series, HUNTING AND SHOOTING. 339 where we read that Davis's tandem was frequently hired for a drive to Virginia Water, and that the more adventurous boys sometimes got a run with the hounds.' Henry Matthews, afterwards author of The Diary of an Invalid, drove through Eton itself. The double danger of being intercepted by a Master or by a gamekeeper added greatly to the excitement of predatory expeditions in Windsor Little Park. A boy named Coke had just shot a hare one day when the gamekeepers came up ; he took to his heels, flung his prey over the wall by the waterside, and, having clambered over, found to his dismay that the comrade whom he had left in the boat had taken alarm and rowed off. As there was not a moment to be lost, he at once plunged into the river with the hare in his mouth, and swam across to the Playing Fields in safety.^ On another occasion, when three boys were coursing with a greyhound in the Park, one of them, named Barnard, was captured by a keeper and locked up for the night. Dr. Goodall was greatly amused at hearing of the affair, and informed the boys of it in school the next morning with mock solemnity : — " One of your comrades is now languishing in prison with common malefactors, for a serious offence against the King himself — poaching in the royal demesnes. I do not know whether he has actually committed high treason, but I am sure you will join with me in a hope that he will escape with his life." The culprit had really spent his time very pleasantly, having had an excellent supper and breakfast in the charming society of the keeper's pretty daughter. In the end he got off scot-free, the King and the Head-Master each leaving it to the other to fix on a suitable punishment.3 Another boy, who survived until 1888, was caught shooting close to the Slough Road, by John Keate, the Under-Master, ' Reminiscences of an Etonian, p. 63- ' Ibid. pp. 83 — 85 ; Information of the late Rev. A. F. Luttrell. ' Ibid. p. 85 ; Information of the late Mr. J. Barnard. Z 2 340 FELL IVS AND BENE FA CTORS. and complained of in due course. The forfeiture of his gun was the worst part of his punishment, for Dr. Goodall's floggings were, hke the rest of his discipHne, of the mildest character.' The School, nevertheless, flourished under his management, and the number of boys was almost as great as when Dr. Barnard resigned. The Fellows at this period were not the kind of men to leave a mark on their age, or even on their College. Several of them were often the laughing-stocks of the boys. John Norbury in particular, known as " Skimmer Jack," used to cause a good deal of amusement by preaching the same sermons over and over again in the Chapel. One morning on mounting the pulpit, he found on the cushion before him a list of his favourite texts, headed : — " Skimmer Jack, which is it to be ? " Of another Fellow, William Roberts, who was elected at the early age of twenty-four, simply because he was son of the reigning Provost, it is related that when told that a chalybeate had been discovered in the Shooting Fields, he answered : — " Put it into the cistern with the rest of the fish." In addition to the benefactions of Dr. Davies already mentioned in this chapter, we must here record Jacob Bryant's legacy of i,ooo/. for the benefit of superannuated Collegers. The Eton Library received a great accession in 1799 by the legacy of Anthony Morris Storer's collection of choice books and fine prints ; ' and the ante-chapel was beautified by the erection of a marble statue of Henry VI., by Bacon, costing about 700/., the gift of Edward Betham, one of the Fellows. A legacy of 5*550/. from Lord Godolphin didlittle to amend the fare of the unfortunate Collegers, for only a part of the interest was annually expended in providing pudding on Sundays, the remainder being allowed to accumulate for the benefit of a future generation. The College brew-house, which • Information of the late Rev. I " Musce Etonenses, N.S. vol. i. p. A. F. Luttrell. I 48. LIFE IN COLLEGE. 341 in former days had supplied beer to kings and nobles, bore an indifferent reputation at the end of the eighteenth century. In a parody on Gray's Ods, written "on a nearer prospect" of Eton, in 1798, a Colleger derides the quality of the beer : — " Pint after pint you drink in vain. Still sober you may drink again, You can't get drunk in Hall.'' ' The scanty food provided by the College had to be supple- mented from other sources. Breakfasts were obtained at private rooms hired in the town ; lower boys were made to bring cans of beer from the ' Christopher' at their own peril ; and a bar in the window of Lower Chamber was loo.sened at night in order to admit provisions from without.'' An Eton tradition of this period, since turned into verse, relates how for a few days the Collegers enjoyed the unwonted luxury of sucking-pig for supper : — " There lived a flayflfnt near ; we stole his fruit, His hens, his eggs ; but there was law for us ; We paid in person. He had a sow, sir. She With meditative grunts of much content. Lay great with pig, wallowing in sun and mud. By night we dragg'd her to the college tower From her warm bed, and up the corkscrew stair With hand and rope we haled the groaning sow. And on the leads we kept her till she pigg'd. Large range of prospect had the mother sow. And but for daily loss of one she loved. As one by one we took them — but for this — As never sow was higher in the world — Might have been happy: but what lot is pure .' We took them all, till she was left alone ■ Transcribed in a note-book in I ° Reminiscences of an Etonian, the possession of Mr. J. H. Patte- | pp. 76 — 78. son. 342 STRUGGLE FOR TEA. Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine And so return'd unfarrow'd to her sty." ' The absence of any effective supervision of the Collegers after ' lock-up,' left them free to do whatever they pleased, and some spent their evenings in gambling. In September 1806, lansquenet was much in vogue, having supplanted whist ; and Oppidans, presumably well provided with money, sometimes came in to play. A Colleger in the sixth form was said to have won no less than ;£'i8, and another to have lost ;^iO, within a few days after their return at the end of the holidays. Theatricals in Long Chamber were a more legitimate form of amusement.^ Shortly before the appointment of Goodall to be Head- Master, some boys boarding in his house established the custom of taking tea on weekday afternoons, which in later times has been supplied by the different tutors and dames. There are several entries on the subject in the Diary of C. T. Metcalfe, afterwards Lord Metcalfe : — March 3, 1800. — " Drank tea after six in Hervey's room, according to agreement. Afraid the plan of bringing in that custom won't succeed." March 4. — " Drank tea solo." March 5. — " Drank tea. in Neville's room, according to agreement, after six. My hopes gain on my fears, though the latter are still predominant." March 6. — "Tutor jawed about drinking tea after six. Drank tea with Tonson." March 7. — " Drank tea with Shaw, according to our convention, after six. Tutor jawed with great spirit. Destruction of our plan must in the end come on. We are at our last struggle ; all our endeavours now are the exertions of despair, and we must only think how to resign ' Tennyson's Poems — Walking to the Mail. The story is told in prose in the Reminiscences of an Etonian [H. C. Blake], pp. 76 — 78. = Lane-Poole's Life of Stratford Canning, vol. i. pp. 18 — 21 ; Stapyl- ton's Eton School Lists, pp. 45 — 47. CHARLES T. METCALFE. 343 nobly ; in such cases as these, unanimity is required to obtain success, and that has not been obtained." March 10. — " Gave tea to Neville, Hervey, and Shaw, after six, according to agreement. Had a most tremendous jaw from my tutor, who said nothing but that it was a serious inconvenience, but could not bring one argument to prove that it was so." March 1 1 . — " Gave Tonson tea." March 12. — " Drank tea with Shaw." March 14. — " Drank tea with Hervey after six. We have conquered, and my tutor, not finding an argument against us, was obliged to consent, so that we now do it lawfully. Had it not been for our last despairing struggles, we should have failed." This young innovator has also left a record of the books which he read at Eton for his own amusement and instruction : Ariosto, Voltaire's Louis XIV. and Charles XII., Rousseau, Gibbon, Rowley's Poems, and Goldsmith's Deserted Village.^ The last year of Goodall's Head-Mastership was memorable for a flood, which carried away six of the central arches of Fifteen Arch Bridge on the Slough Road, between the Playing Fields and the Timbralls. For five days, some of the board- ing-houses were inaccessible except by water. An energetic master would have arranged that the boys should be con- veyed to school in punts, or that they should write out and translate the lessons of the day instead of construing them in their respective classes. Goodall, however, was content to do nothing of the sort, and the boys, confined to their houses, lay in bed of a morning till a late hour, and spent their time in mischief, varied by games of cards, and of an evening by the discharge of small fire-balloons. This was amusing enough for a while, but the novelty of the situation soon wore off, and ' bricks ' from Windsor proved poor substitutes for the fresh ' Kaye's Life of Lord Metcalfe, (ed. 1854) vol. i. pp. 10 — 16. 344 FIFTEEN ARCH BRIDGE. rolls ordinarily supplied for breakfast by the Eton bakers whose ovens were submerged.' The broken arches of the bridge were eventually replaced by three of larger span, which cost the College upwards of 900/. and lasted until 1833, when the county of Buckingham pulled down the whole of Fifteen Arch Bridge and erected the present structure, consisting of three arches only. The old name, however, survives. • Information of the late Rev. I an Etonian, p. 98. R. Okes, D.D. ; Reminiscences of I view from Fifteen Arcli Bridge. i8o9 — 1834. Administration of Dr. Keate — Attempted Rebellions in 1810 and 1818 — State of Education at Eton — Frequency of Floggings — Theatricals — Magazines — Cricket — Boating — Other Sports — Practical Jokes — Dr. Goodall as Provost — Resignation of Dr. Keate. HEN the Provostship became vacant in 1809 by the death of Dr. Davies, Spencer Perceval recommended one of the Fellows, Dr. Benjamin Heath, brother of the late Head-Master of Eton, but George HI. said in his quaint way, " He will never do, for he ran away from Eton ;" alluding to his having gone to Harrow as Head-Master in 1772. Having thus rejected the nominee of the Harrovian Premier, the King turned for advice to the Marquess Wellesley, who at once put forward the claims of Joseph Goodall. The King said, " Goodall, Goodall, Goodall," and shortly gave orders for the issue of the customary mandate in his favour. It is worthy of remark that Dr. Heath's two immediate predecessors in the Head-Mastership of Harrow had been Scholars. and Assistant Masters at Eton. A faction at Harrow had in vain tried to secure the appointment of Samuel Parr, on the ground " that 346 CHANGE OF MASTERS. a school of such reputation ought not to be considered a mere appendix to Eton." ' Goodall was succeeded in the management of the School by John Keate, the Usher, or Under-Master. C. R. Sumner, then a sixth form boy, afterwards Bishop of Winchester, writing from Eton, two days after Christmas, thus explains the position of affairs to his old schoolfellow, John Patteson : — " As I should think that you must by this time be safely landed in the wool-pits, take, my dear Patty, some account of the various changes and chances which have taken place here within the last four weeks. Of course the papers have shown you how Goodall is appointed Provost, how he has kissed hands, how he has retained his Canonry, how — but all the other acts that he did, are they not written in the Gazette of December the 1 5 th .? This seems to give universal pleasure as to the advancement of the man, but as to the removal of the man from his archididascal functions, the joy comes with sorrow not unmixed. His bears his dignity well, and makes his bows a third lower on the occasion. " The canvass for the place of the Under-Master was hot — Thackeray, Carter-, Drury, and Yonge. The latter soon resigned ; Drury was informed that he might break the disappointment to himself by degrees, and set off for Devonshire without injuring his chance. The contest then lay between Thackeray and Carter, the latter of whom was considered the College man. My brother ^ canvassed strongly for Thackeray, and his beautiful sister caught a cold in his service, and, about three days ago, their united efforts were successful. This will suit well with his weak state of health, for though the business is if possible more than that of an Assistant, yet it is lighter, and less head-work. His income will be less than it is at present, but that must be of little comparative consequence to him. ' Windsor and Eton Journal, March 28, 1840; Collins's Public Schools, p. 279. ° One of the Assistant-Masters, afterwards Archbishop of Canter- bury. JOHN KEA TE. 347 Yonge is to come into the Upper School, being hand and glove with our supreme Keate. Thackeray sent an in- vitation to . . . William Heath to come into the Lower School. Such is the state of things here, and it is alto- gether so unpleasing a prospect that I am very impatient to free myself from all the bore of verses and lyrics." ' Many of the boys were of opinion that Benjamin Heath Drury ought to have been appointed Head-Master, instead of Keate, and manifested their displeasure in various ways. Drury himself behaved loyally to his new chief, and in a harangue to his pupils said : — " I had much rather you should cry ' Down with Drury,' than put me in a false position with the Head-Master, and I must beg of you, as I advise you, to be careful of your conduct." ° Under date of the 17th of January, 18 10, a lady records in her Diary :^ " Mr. Keate put on his robes for the first time, and his beautiful triangular hat, and went in to 8 o'clock prayers. .... To-day at 11 was his first d^but in the Upper School." The new Head-Master found himself in a difficult position. The universal popularity of his predecessor was in itself sufficient to make him start at a disadvantage, by creating a prejudice against him, which his appearance and manner were not calculated to remove. Although not really less kind at heart than the indulgent Goodall, he thought fit to display a harsh, dictatorial tone towards those under him, on a theory that a school should be managed by intimidation rather than by encouragement. The boys chafed at his severe discipline, and more than once meditated open rebellion. Symptoms of ill-feeling showed themselves from the first, sometimes in the form of practical jokes. One morning, a boy named ' Original letter in the possession j " Information of the late Rev. R. of Mr. J. H. Patteson. I Okes, D.D. 348 DISCONTENT IN 1810. Cornewall blocked up the keyhole of the door between the ' Library ' and the Upper School with a bullet, and Keate was consequently obliged to go round to the great entrance and walk up the whole length of the School, amid shouts of " Boo, Boo." On reaching the enclosed platform which forms the Head- Master's desk, he found one of the doors screwed up ; with an angry growl he crossed over to the other, only to find it similarly closed against him. This would have baffled most men, but Keate's spirit was indomitable, and he surprised every one present by nimbly vaulting into his place, saying, " I'm not so old as you think." He never succeeded in discovering the offenders. ' In a letter to John Patteson, written in May 18 10, C. R. Sumner asks : — " What wind blew you to Eton t Is it possible you can have been hinting to Keate any secret desires which you may still cherish for the grinding trade .? The door seems shut closer at present to new-comers than at any former time, unless Keate throws up in disgust. I understand there is much chance of these rumblings and grumblings continuing, as the principal malcontents agreed to carry on the joke after their return. Keate will not bear being trifled with half so well as Goodall, and will deal his blows about with a heavy hand, should they force him to extremi- ties I suppose you have been enjoying his dozen of wine in Old Court, for I hear he is Doctored." Many of the boys in the lower part of the fifth form took to lingering in the ante-Chapel before service, until the Masters came in, and rushing to their places in a disorderly manner. " To stop this unseemly practice, Dr. Keate imposed an ' Information of the late Rev. A. F. Luttrell ; Hogg's Life of Shelley , vol. i. p. 46. Another account (in Capt. Gronow's Recollections, 4th series, pp. 53 — 56) goes on to say that at the end of the lesson Keate found himself stuck to his seat by a lump of cobbler's wax ; but this must be apocryphal, as it was always the custom for the Head- Master to stand in desk. ATTEMPTED REBELLION. 349 additional ' absence ' on that part of the School which he considered to be most in fault. The consequence of this was, that the no or 120 boys affected by the novelty, instead of being their own masters from four to six on whole holidays, were obliged to attend and answer to their names at five ; and thus, to speak in the language of Eton, the ' after-four ' was completely cut up. An ' absence ' is a ceremony at which every boy is required to be present ; as each name is called, the proprietor answers, ' Here, Sir ! ' and any stray, who cannot give a satisfactory excuse, receives a flagellation. On this particular occasion, the boys concerned, with a few exceptions, kept away ; and in consequence, each received from the Head-Master six cuts with a birch rod." This punishment was inflicted after six o'clock ' absence ' on the 2nd of June, 18 10. When twenty boys had been flogged in rapid succession, their comrades began to grow rebellious, and some few of them threw rotten eggs at Dr. Keate, who there- upon sent for the Assistant-Masters. The young mutineers were plainly told that resistance would be followed by immediate expulsion, and sixty more were duly flogged, none of the number eventually refusing to submit. Keate's firmness and courage were much applauded, particularly by the King, who was cognisant of all the circumstances. The additional ' absence ' was taken off after the summer holidays.' The Head-Master had to encounter opposition of a more serious character in October 1818, when, in order to check the hunting, shooting, and tandem-driving, then in vogue among the boys, he altered the hour at which the boarding-houses were to be locked up of an evening from six o'clock to five. The whole School was in a state of ferment for several days. Windows were broken ; part of the wall of the Long Walk was thrown down, and further mischief was daily anticipated. ' The Song of Floggawaya [by I MS. Diary in the possession of the W. N. Lettsom], 1856, pp. iv.— v. ; I Rev. J. C. Keate. 350 REBELLION IN 1818. The private expulsion of a boy, who, although only in the Remove, had acquired a reputation as a skilful whip, tended to aggravate matters. He himself behaved well, for, being unavoidably detained at Eton, he sent to ask the Head-Master whether it would not be expedient for him to leave during Church time, so that there might be no demonstration on the part of his comrades. When, on the following day, which was Sunday, Keate went into Upper School at two o'clock to read ' Prose,' the whole building resounded with angry shouts of " Where's Marriott .' " Unable to make himself heard amid the prevailing groans and hisses, he descended from his desk, and passed out into the adjoining room. No sooner was his back turned than a volley of rotten eggs were sent after him, but even the boldest of the rioters were careful not to take too good an aim, and he escaped untouched. He returned in a few minutes accompanied by several of the Assistant-Masters, and, by stationing them at intervals down the School, with instructions to seize anyone who spoke, he succeeded in restoring order. Two days later, the Head-Master's great desk at the end of Upper School was found to have been smashed to pieces in the night. A little Colleger, who had been seen there under suspicious circumstances, was immediately haled before Keate and a council of Masters, and, although he was able to establish his own innocence, he was compelled in cross-examination to reveal the perpetrators of the outrage, two Collegers, and four Oppidans, all of them high in the fifth form. After Church, the boys were summoned into Upper School, where all the Masters were assembled. Keate called over their names, and then pronounced formal sentence of expulsion on the four Oppidans who were subject to his jurisdiction. When he proceeded to express a hope that this exemplary punishment would induce the boys to behave better in the future, one who was known to have been a ringleader in mutiny was heard to say, " Never ! " and was accordingly expelled on the spot. REBELLION IN 1818. 351 In the absence of the Provost, the two inculpated Collegers were privately dismissed by the Vice-Provost. Matters, however, did not end here, for some of the boys had sworn an oath neither to go into their house at 5 on half- holidays and holidays, nor to submit to a flogging for dis- obedience, and one, aged only thirteen, proved so obdurate on this point, that his father, one of the Judges, had to remove him from the School. Placards were also affixed to the doors of the Church and other conspicuous places in Eton, in- scribed, " Down with Keate — No five o'clock absence — Floreat Seditio" and the like. By the end of the week, however, the excitement had subsided, and on the 8th of November, Keate was able to report that the boys had been " as quiet as lambs " at ' Prose,' in marked contrast to their conduct on the previous Sunday. Still he found himself unable entirely to check the riding and tandem-driving, the frequent resistance to constituted authority at Eton, as at Winchester, at Harrow, and other schools, being in his opinion due to imperfect control of parents over their sons at home, and the large allowances of money too readily granted.' The following letter, which he received from the Duke of Wellington at the close of the year, is interesting as giving a distinguished- soldier's opinion as to the system of discipline that should prevail at a public school : — " I have received your letter of the 23rd, and I am very happy to find that my sons had nothing to say to the late disturbances at Eton. They are too young to be concerned in such transactions, and I hope that they have been sufficiently well brought up, and have sufficient sense, to keep themselves clear of them at all times. " You have it in your own power to frame such rules as you may think proper for the preservation of order in the establishment under your direction, and to enforce them as you may think proper, and as far as I have anything to say ' MS. Diary in the possession of I November 9, 1818; Collins's Etoni- the Rev. J^ C. Keate; The Courier, \ ana, p. no. 352 JOHN KEATE. to the subject you may rely upon my concurrence in what- ever you may think proper to do with the view to which I have above referred. But in my opinion the parents of those who are receiving their education at Eton have nothing to say to the rules which you may choose to adopt and enforce. If they are so unreasonable as to disapprove of them, they have it in their power to remove their sons from the school, but none to influence your regulations or your mode of enforcing them." ' Keate ruled the School with unrivalled vigour for a full quarter of a century, and he will never be forgotten by any who were brought into contact with him. Mr. Kinglake's brilliant sketch of his former master, written to a non-Etonian friend, is a locus classicus, which can hardly be omitted. " I think you must have some idea of him already, for wherever from utmost Canada to Bundelcund — wherever there was a white-washed wall of an officer's room, or of any other apartment in which English gentlemen are forced to kick their heels, there likely enough (in the days of his reign) the head of Keate would be seen, scratched, or drawn with those various degrees of skill which one observes in the representation of Saints. Anybody without the least notion of drawing could still draw a speaking, nay scolding, likeness of Keate. If you had no pencil you could draw him well enough with a poker, or the leg of a chair, or the smoke of a candle. He was little more (if more at all) than five feet in height, and was not very great in girth, but in this space was concentrated the pluck of ten battalions. He had a really noble voice, and this he could modulate with great skill, but he also had the power of quacking like an angry duck, and he almost always adopted this mode of communication in order to inspire respect ; he was a capital scholar, but his ingenuous learning had 7iot softened his manners, and had permitted them to be fierce — tre- mendously fierce ; he had the most complete command over ■ Original letter in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate. JOHN KEA TE. 353 his temper — I mean over his good temper — which he scarcely ever allowed to appear : you could not put him out of humour — that is, out of the z/Z-humour which he thought to be fitting for a head-master. His shaggy eyebrows were so prominent that he habitually used them as arms and hands, for the purpose of pointing out any object towards Dr. Keate.' which he wished to direct attention ; the rest of his features were equally striking in their way, and were all and all his own." = Humorous descriptions of this kind, true enough as far as they go, do not (and perhaps are not intended to) contain an exhaustive analysis of character. Keate was a really great master, though his views and system of education would not accord with modern ideas ; and here and there one may even ' From an original sketch taken in Upper School by J. Calvert Jones. ' Eothetiy ch. xviii. A A 354 ST A TE OF EDUCA TION. now find a laudator teviporis acti se puero, declaring that there has been no proper discipline at Eton since 1834. Keate's career at the University had been brilliant ; his Latin verse was second to that of no contemporary ; ' and he possessed in an eminent degree the power of imparting clearly to others the results of his own careful classical reading. The school-hours, and the lessons done in them, while he was Head-Master, were almost identical with those of the previous century.'^ A cor- respondent intimately acquainted with Eton affairs contri- butes the following notes on the state of education in Keate's time : — " There were three ancient authors well known to Eton- ians — Homer, Virgil, and Horace. If a boy was in the School for eight or ten years, as many Collegers were, he was sure to go through the Iliad once and a half, the ^neid twice ; there was no certainty that he would know the Eclogues or the Georgics at all ; and of the Odyssey he must needs know, only too familiarly, a few hundred lines which were in the school-book called Poeta Greed, a book then very meagre and insufficient, but many years afterwards expanded into a valuable, though by no means perfect, anthology of Greek verse. All Horace, except perhaps the Epodes, was read and repeated, subject to expurgation, but it may be doubted whether even superior boys knew the meaning of the Odes accurately. However, these three poets were on the whole as familiarly known as could be reasonably ex- pected, and an Oppidan spending only three years at Eton, and being for half that time under Keate, was pretty sure to read thus much with relish and with advantage. But the late Lord Halifax, who left school in 1 8 1 8 and went straight to Oxford, had never read a line of Thucydides. The wretched compilation called Scriptores Grceci consisted of a lump of Lucian, with a veneer, gradually thickened, of scraps ' Nevertheless it has been ob- served that he used a final vowel short before sp and sc. Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson, vol. i. 150. ° See Chapter xvi. STATE OF EDUCATION. 355 of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plato ; so that literally not one first-rate Greek prose writer was really known to the student of ]8i8. Yet he found himself at Oriel as good a scholar as any man from any other school- Between 1818 and 1834, the Scriptores GrcBci may have been altered a little, and Hawtrey added to it from time to time. At one period it contained several solid insertions — the first book of the Anabasis, Plato's Euthryphon, and the Menexenus (which was probably accepted as a veracious sketch of Athenian history), but to the last, Herodotus and Thucydides were represented in a capricious and unsystematic set of selections, and as late as 1842 a reflective freshman at Cambridge was able to say with truth that he had been taught Greek in school at Eton, but had been left to get his knowledge of Attic Greek out of school. The young man who entered Oriel in 181 8, fresh from the Upper Division, had paid for private tuition for three years, but the whole amount of what he had done with two clever tutors was this — with one he had read the Alcestis (a very short and easy play), to the other he had said by heart, on Sundays, the first Satire of Juvenal. We must complete the account of his Greek studies by adding that he had been in the habit of saying by heart, on Monday morning, to an Assist- ant Master, some fifteen verses of the Greek Testament, of course without interpretation or comment. This was pro- bably meant for a religious lesson to be learnt on Sunday. " Turning to Latin prose literature, in Keate's days and down to a very recent time, it was represented by a book called Scriptores Romani, an odd but interesting compilation, bearing up to the last edition, the impress of a mind which contemplated not merely elegant scholarship, but the training of young men for a Parliamentary career, for it contained a good deal of fine hard Latin about oratory and public virtue, and though it was wofully inadequate as a thread of beads to illustrate Roman history, it betokened a lofty purpose corresponding to Lord Chatham's ideas, and it was a great relief to the intellect. Nor is it fair to forget that for sixth form boys the Scriptores Romani was handsomely supple- A A 2 3 S6 STATE OF ED UCA TION. mcnted by the ' Speech-book,' which contained many gems of eloquence ; only it was a pity that the young reciters were not taught to construe what they learned by heart. " Meagre as this bill of fare may appear, it would be a mistake to think that a clever or even an average boy suf- fered from scantiness of classical diet so much as he did indirectly from the limited range of knowledge and the indifference growing out of monotony, which inevitably lowered the tone of the ordinary teachers. It was a grievous thing that a man charged with the philological training of choice lads should be wholly unacquainted with such a writer as Aristophanes, or be obliged to leave out the choric verse in reading the Agaviemnou with his pupils. Monotony is the inevitable burden to be borne by a schoolmaster, but personal character sometimes overcomes this sort of limita- tion ; and we may readily believe that some of Keate's Assistants were better acquainted with ancient literature than they were bound to be ; still, at the best they were probably ignorant men compared with College tutors. ' Private business ' gave them occupation. In their own pupil-rooms, with a limited class, they would, for instance, . read the Medea of Euripides, in lessons of thirty lines, given three times a week ; or they would judiciously take the boys through the narrative in Thucydides of the siege of Platea ; or they would refresh their own weary souls with a duly prepared edition of the Frogs of Aristophanes. But it must be remembered that, being overwhelmed with the correction of verses, and with dull routine labour wasted on themes in which neither man nor boy took any interest, they did not even in ' private business ' set their pupils tasks which re- quired the use of a pen. Written translations from Greek or Latin into English, or from English into Latin or Greek, were unknown at Eton, as were also questions on history or divinity. " The Oriel man of whom mention has been made had missed the best part of Keate's teaching, by not being in the sixth form, for the sixth form had special lectures on JOHN KEA TE. 357 Greek plays, and it is well ascertained that in his quiet class- room Keate used to give out his best knowledge, seasoned with perfect taste and free from all pedantry, to a respectful party of eighteen lads who were too much behind the scenes to be afraid of him.' It may fairly be doubted whether there was any man who was doing better work than this in any English school, except Butler of Shrewsbury.^ Few are the traditions of Keate's critical tenets ; 3 and when asked after his retirement to let others have the benefit of his writ- ten notes on the books he had expounded, he shrank from the suggestion with unique bashfulness ; but it was honestly believed by his best pupils and assistants that they owed almost everything to his soundness of mind and rigorous accuracy, and it was well known that if an exercise came into school badly altered, he pointed out the mistakes in ' The following anecdote tends to prove that he was a rational teacher. The late Bishop of Lich- field was translating Horace's ac- count of the auctioneer at the barber's shop " proprios purganteni leniter ungues," "cleaning his own nails." Keate corrected him, " cleaning his nails. Go on." Again and again the lad said " his own nails." Keate scolded him, but he held out against the less emphatic "his,'' and argued the point. " If you please, Sir, Horace lays the stress on the word ^ pro- prios^ because most of the dandies made the barbers pare their nails ; and when Philippus saw Mena par- ing his own nails ' vacua in umbra ' — though nobody was engaging the barber's time — he thought him a man of some energy, and likely to become a good farmer." Keate, in his truly generous spirit of appre- ciation, said, " Well there's some- thing in that. Lay the stress, then, on proprios." ' The passage in the text, written in 1875, is strikingly confirmed by a letter, which has been found since at Youngsbury, from R. A. Hornby to his former school-fellow, C. W. Puller, in March 1824 : — " Sixth-form business occupies me almost entirely, so that my own reading is reduced to a mere no- thing, which is not, as you may suppose, satisfactory. I will say^ however, that in school the gain which the sixth form brings with it is incredible, for, from getting up each lesson with care, and hearing in part and bringing out in part the information which each conveys with it, the quantity of knowledge which one gets in a day is ten times what it used to be, and it is imparted lastingly." ' It is remembered that he trans- lated " incolumi Jove" and " in- cohimi gravitate" as " without regard for Jupiter,'' and, " without regard for gravity." 358 STATE OF EDUCATION. ' Chambers ' to the terror of negligent tutors.' He may at least be said to have been the main, if not the sole, support of scholarship, no less than of discipline, to have done all he could to make up for the deficiencies of his staff, and to have left a very strong mental impression on several lads who at Oxford, at Cambridge, and at St. Stephen's, proved them- selves first-rate men." The pages of Mr. Stapylton's Eton School Lists teem with the names of boys who obtained the highest honours of their respective universities, and Dr. Jelf s dictum that " if a boy of parts chooses to work at Eton, Eton will do him justice, and he will do Eton justice," ^ is true of almost any period in the present century. On the other hand, the amount of work absolutely enforced at Eton has generally been very small indeed. One great obstacle to efficient instruction on the part of the Head-Master was the unwieldy size of his class. In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the total ' It may here be explained, that, according to a system pecuhar to Eton, every Assistant-Master who took a regular class in school had also under his charge a number of boys varying considerably in age, whom he instructed in their own re- spective work ; or, to put the case conversely, that every boy had to encounter the double ordeal of being called up to construe a lesson before his tutor and before the Master in school. So, too, every copy of verses and every theme was looked over twice, first in the pupil-i"oom, and then in school. The tutor made any corrections thai seemed desirable, and the boy showed up a fair copy in school. This system incidentally gave every Master frequent opportunities of gauging the scholarship of his colleagues. A boy skilled in copy- ing the handwriting of one of the Masters was in the habit of intro- ducing eccentric alterations into the verses of his schoolfellows, as they lay on a table after being looked over. One day he found a hexa- meter ending " nigrum detrusit ad Orcum '' (he thrust him down to the dark Hades), and substituted the word " conto " for " nigrum!' The author of the verses copied out all the alterations in perfect good faith, but the word '' conto " caught the eye of Keate when he was looking over the fair copy. " What do you mean by using such a word as conto ? — ' he thrust him down to Hades with a punt-pole.' How dare you write such rubbish ? " " If you please, Sir, it was my tutor's cor- rection," replied the boy with all the confidence of injured innocence. " Contemporary Review, vol. iii. UNWIELDY CLASSES. 359 number of boys in the School was about the same as at the date of Dr. Keate's accession, Dr. Barnard used to undertake the whole fifth form in addition to the sixth, but as the Upper School increased at the expense of the Lower School, it was found necessary to separate the fifth form into two divisions, of which the lower was transferred to an Assistant-Master. Nevertheless, Keate found himself the sole teacher in school of about 170 boys, and the numbers continued to increase. The late Mr. Edward Coleridge remembered being one of 198 boys in the Head-Master's division, and, as might be expected, he was called up to construe twice only in the course of a half' Songs and even choru.ses used to be sung in school, but Keate was seldom able to ascertain whence the sounds proceeded. An attempt was made to remedy this state of things in 1820, by the formation of a ' middle division ' between the upper and lower divisions of the fifth form, but even after this change, more than 100 boys were still left under the immediate supervision of the Head- Master. There were up to this time six Masters in the Upper School, which generally consisted of upwards of four hundred and fifty boys, so that each of the five Assistants had on an average about seventy boys under him in school. Nor were matters much better in pupil-room, for although the average number of boys to a tutor was about fifty-three, the more popular tutors had between sixty and seventy pupils apiece. Of course they could not do justice to all. They were supple- mented by some thirty-two private tutors, entirely unconnected with the School, and engaged by wealthy parents and guardians to look after a very small number of pupils specially entrusted to them. Even as late as 1833 there were only nine masters. Dr. Keate included, for the five hundred and seventy boys in the Upper School.'' ■ Report of Public Schools Com- mission. Eton Evidence, 3701. "^ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 112. Informa- tion of the late Rev. R. Okes, D.D. 36o NEWCASTLE SCHOLARSHIP. The Duke of Newcastle gave a great impetus to learning at Eton in 1829, by founding three Scholarships, each worth 50/. a year and tenable for three years. One Newcastle Scholar is elected annually after a competitive examination open to Oppidans and Collegers alike, and a medal of the value of 61. is given to the candidate who stands second. The Duke's munificence obtained for him such a degree of celebrity that a boy, who himself afterwards gained the Newcastle Scholarship and a double first class at Oxford, being asked to name the Three Graces answered : — " Grace before meat, Grace after meat, and his Grace the Duke of Newcastle." ' Before 1829, the talent and industry of boys in the ' upper division ' and in the sixth form could be measured only by a reference to the number of their ' sent up ' exercises ; or, in other words, by the proficiency they had shown in the composition of Latin and Greek verses ; but the im- portance avowedly attached to other branches of classical study in the examination for the Newcastle Scholarship, roused ambition in the minds of many who, though quite disposed to work, did not happen to possess the peculiar knack of writing verses.^ The competitors soon discovered the advantage of the help afforded by "private business" in pupil-room, and the tutors were put on their mettle. Thus within a few years, by training a series of Newcastle Scholars, the late Mr. Edward Coleridge acquired a reputation higher than that enjoyed by any Assistant-Master at Eton before or since. Nor must we fail to notice the beneficial effect produced by the exaction of a fair knowledge of divinity as a preliminary and necessary condition of success. The founder of ttiis scholarship, indeed, originally intended that it should be styled " The Christian Scholarship," but he was dissuaded from this idea by Dr. Keate, who also pointed out ' Saturday Review, Feburary 5, I ' Eton College Magazine,'^. 231. 1S76. I RELIGIOUS TEACHING. the undesirability of examining boys of seventeen and eighteen upon the Thirty-nine Articles.' It seems incredible that there should ever have been an entire absence of religious teaching at the greatest school in Christian EngJand ; yet such, from all accounts, must have been the case at Eton until about sixty years ago.'' This was less the fault of individual tutors than of the established system, which practically debarred a sincerely pious man like J. B. Sumner, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, from saying a single word about God to his pupils. ^ The establishment of the Newcastle Scholarship enabled Mr. Chapman, Mr. Wilder, and Mr. Coleridge, to substitute a lesson in the Greek Testament, for a repetition of Virgil or Juvenal on Sunday mornings. Their efforts and example bore fruit in course of time, but Sunday can hardly be said to have been observed as a day of rest at any period during Keate's reign, the hour between two and three o'clock especially being spent in a manner which would now be considered disgraceful. All the boys (except of course those who were under the jurisdiction of the Lower-Master) had to repair to the Upper School directly after dinner, in order to listen to a singular harangue, called " Prose " by everybody except Keate, who used to say " Prose, sir, prose ; I don't know anything about prose ; I suppose you mean two o'clock prayers." When all were assembled, the Head-Master read aloud a short dis- course on abstract morality taken from Blair's Sermons, from the Spectator, or from the works of some pagan writer like Epictetus, and then gave out to the fifth and sixth forms the subject for their Latin theme for the ensuing week.* Perhaps it was as well that passages relating to more sacred • Draft of letter from Dr. Keate to the Duke of Newcastle, in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate. ' See 'LoHt's Self Formation, vol. ii. pp. 54—55- ' Sumner himself spoke of his duties as an Assistant-Master for fifteen years as a " hateful trade." Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson, vol. ii. p. 109. ■* See page 297. 362 ' PROSE ' ON SUNDA V. subjects were not read at ' Prose,' for they would only have been received with contempt. In one of the Eton Magazines of the time, a new boy is represented as making the following notes in his diary : — " Was told that I must go into — (dear me, I cannot think of the word, some very odd one) — went into the Upper School, heard something read, could not hear what, and on something being said afterwards, the whole school raised a yell, booing, hissing, and scraping feet. I was thunder- struck at their audacity, listened to hear what would be said to it, thought it amounted almost to a rebellion, thought it disgraceful, surprised all was allowed to pass so quietly." ' This fairly describes what took place almost every Sunday afternoon during a long series of years, the noise in the Upper School being so great as to arrest the attention of all passers- by. It was, in truth, impossible for any one man, however resolute, to coerce such an assemblage of boys. We can scarcely doubt that ' Prose ' was altogether distasteful to Keate, who would have been glad to spend his Sundays at least in peace, but he could make no change without the permission of Goodall, that most conservative of Provosts, and the abuse was tolerated until the days of Hawtrey. Mathematics fared little better than divinity sixty years ago, the study of Euclid, of algebra, and even of arithmetic being practically optional. It was said at the time that some of the cleverest boys in the School would have stood a bad chance if tried in the rule of three.'' The only mathematical teacher was Major Hcxter, the Writing-Master, " In College the handiest man you can find For improvements of all sorts, both buildings and mind." ^ Keate must not be held solely responsible for the many defects in the system maintained in the School during his ' The Kaleidoscope, p. 177. I p. 193. ^ The Etonian, (ed. 1824) vol. iii. | ^ The English Spy, vol. i. p. 55. KEATE AND REFORM. 363 administration, for he did not originate it, and he was technically powerless to amend it. The Provost was supreme, and exercised an authority which every one in Eton was made to feel, from the little Colleger crossing the School- Yard on the wrong side of the statue, to the Head-Master sending up a faulty copy of verses ' for play.' Considering then the fretful impatience with which Goodall received every suggestion of change, even in the most trifling matters, Keate seems to have shrunk from arousing his hostility by proposing any deviation from the old groove. That he was not naturally opposed to judicious reform is evident from a letter which he wrote to Mr. T. Rennell as far back as the year 18 13, criticising the prevailing practice of electing King's Scholars from Eton to Cambridge according to seniority only, and also the discipline at King's — " the regular succession of the worthy and the unworthy to Fellowships, and the want of examination for degrees," King's-men being until long afterwards exempt from the ordinary examinations of the University.' And again, it is well known that, more than twenty years later, he expressed a generous approval of the changes effected by his successor. Dr. Hawtrey. Whether he himself would, under any circumstances, have initiated large measures of reform is, how- ever, very doubtful. Endued with great capacity for adminis- tration, and yet greater capacity for teaching, he had not the qualities of a legislator, and he acquiesced without protest or murmur in carrying on the old-fashioned system under which he and his contemporaries had been educated. He considered that he was performing his duty if, from day to day and from year to year, he imparted sound instruction to the boys committed to his care, and maintained order among them, without looking to the future. In some respects Keate's own policy was certainly unsatisfactory. Personally upright, conscientious, and straight- forward, he had a noted distrust of the honour of boys in ■ Draft in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate. 364 K'EATE'S SYSTEM. general, and he used to make point-blank charges of lying quite at random. He would often say : — " You're hardened in falsehood." The effect of this was to encourage the very evil which he wished to check. At the same time he practically insisted upon the almost daily repetition of certain conventional excuses which he knew to be untrue. Boys, for instance, who after a run with the beagles came to absence splashed with mud, were expected to plead that they had been playing foot- ball, the one amusement being allowed and the other ignored.' A distinguished Etonian still living is reported to have said that Keate exacted a certain amount of lying " as a mark of proper respect." ^ Then again the practice of flogging, indispensable perhaps at any large school, was certainly carried to an extreme by Keate. Slight offences, such as ' shirking absence,' were visited with the same form of punishment as others of a graver character, and the frequency of the infliction deadened the sense of disgrace which corporal punishment ought to convey.3 Keate's victims declared that his very name was derived from yew (I shed) cltti (woe),* and many still remember him simply as a kind of executioner. Some have seriously con- tended that flogging was a pleasure to him, and stories in support of this view abound. A boy who was one day wrongly accused of a misdemeanour, pleaded an alibi, admitting that he had been out of bounds, but this did not save him, for as he enumerated his actions in detail, Keate interposed at the end of every sentence : — " Then I'll flog you for that.'' For boys who were put in the " bill " 5 on account of lessons badly done, he had the ready ' Self-Formation [by Capel Lofft], vol. i. p. 84. "^ Reminiscences of William Rogers, p. 11. 3 Reini?tisce7ices of Sir F. H. Doyle, p. 50. 5 The following definition occurs in one of the Eton magazines : — " Bill, a trifling thin shp of paper with names doomed to flagellation inscribed thereon ; each line as bad as a lawyer's items ; being a 'bill of * Guide to Eton, p. 7. i e.^vchange ' of birch for idleness ; the FLOGGINGS. 365 dilemma : — " Is it ignorance, or is it idleness ? If it is ignor- ance, you must go down to a lower part of the school, and if it is idleness, I'll flog you." ' .i;Lk_i. Block and Birch. Although many anecdotes of Keate and his ways are certainly apocryphal, it seems clear that he was in the habit of using this particular threat on the most inappropriate occasions. In terror of lower boys, and the laugh- ing-stock of sixth-form praepostors." — The Kaleidoscope, p. 107. ' One of the best stories of the period describes the misadventure of a batch of candidates for con- firmation whose names were by accident sent up to the Head- Master on a piece of paper identi- cal in size and shape with the ' bill ' used by the^Masters for the purpose of reporting delinquents. Keate, we are asked to believe, insisted on flogging all the boys mentioned in the document, being the more angry with them for at- tempting to escape punishment by setting up a plea which was not only false but irreverent {Etomana, p. 103). Another story gives the Doctor's comment on the sixth Beatitude — " ' Blessed are the pure in heart.' Mind that ; it's your duty to be pure in heart. If you are not pure in heart, I'll flog you." Then again, an old Etonian 1 elates that when he was acting as curate to Dr. Keate, after his retirement 366 REBELLION IN 1832. his time, as indeed in the times of his successors, Dr. Hawtrey, Dr. Goodford, and Dr. Balston, it was customary for boys to call upon the Head-Master in Chambers on the eve of their final departure from the school, and furtively to deposit on the table bank-notes to the value of 10/., or even more, and it is remembered that Keate once shouted after, a boy who had thus formally ' taken leave ' of him : — " Now mind you behave quietly. If 1 hear of your making a noise at your dame's I'll have you brought back, and I'll flog you." But all stories of Keate's dealings with individual cases sink into insignificance beside the fact that on the 30th of June, 1832, he flogged more than eighty boys. Laughable as were some of its incidents, this wholesale chastisement was one of the wisest measures of his administration. A very popular boy named Munro, who afterwards com- manded a regiment in the Crimea, had, for talking in school, been ordered to write out a punishment, but,'instead of beginning it at the appointed time, he had gone to see a boat-race. For this, he was sentenced to be flogged, but he refused to submit, and Keate was obliged to write to his father to request that he should be removed from the School. When at the next ' absence,' the name of Munro was omitted, the boys then in the School- Yard set up shouts of " Munro, Munro ! Boo, boo ! " which were heard at the further end of Keate's Lane. This conduct was repeated at another ' absence,' and, to punish it, the Head-Master announced that the boys in the middle and lower divisions of the fifth form would be required to answer to their names at three additional 'absences' at i, 7.15, and 8. P.M. on holidays and half-holidays until further notice. At from Eton, and, as such, scolding a Hampshire lad for misbehaviour in church, the Rector and ex-Head- Master came up " full of apparent ire," and "poked off the village boy's hat," saying : — " What's this, sir, don't answer me, sir. Take off your hat, sir. I'll flog you di- rectly." (Wilkinson's Reminis- cences, p. 19.) Unfortunately, the person reproved, and another who was present, deny that Keate made use of this threat which he had so often used at Eton. REBELLION IN 1832. 367 first they complied, but on the second day they resolved to try their strength against the Head-Master, by ignoring the 'absence' at 7.15, and refusing to be flogged, if summoned to the block. More than a hundred accordingly, relying upon their numbers for impunity, stayed away. Keate was fully alive to the danger which menaced his authority, but like a great general, he acted on the principle Divide et impera. Waiting until the recalcitrant boys were safe in bed, or at any rate dispersed among the different boarding-houses, he sent the Assistant-Masters to bring them to him in small relays, after ten o'clock. Thus taken by surprise, the boys had no opportunity of arranging any common line of action ; each of them was ignorant of what his friends would do, and resolved for his own part to be on the safe side. In vain did some of the more ardent spirits at Knapp's shout from the open windows : — " Don't be flogged. Don't be flogged. We hav'n't been flogged." Out of the whole number, only two refused to submit, while twenty-one others declared that they did not know that there was to be * absence ' that evening. Keate dealt with the rest one by one, and the operation lasted until long after mid- night.' " Then cleft the room with screeches riven. Then rushed the boys to flogging driven. And louder than the wind of heaven Far flew the buds quite terribly. " Few, few shall stay where many are. No refuge bed shall be from care. And every cry which comes from far, Is, ' Oh, this hurts most wofully.' " = Sore in mind and body, the rebels could not but admit that they had been beaten in every sense of the word. ' MS. Diary in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate ; Etoniana, pp. 104 — 109 ; Wilkinson's Reminis- cences of Eton, pp. 32—39- ' Lines by E. M. Goulburn (now Dean of Norwich) in the Kaleido- scope, p. 280. 368 PUNISHMENTS REMITTED. Nevertheless many of them joined heartily in the cheers with which their seniors greeted the Head-Master as he crossed the Long Walk on the following Monday morning.' The two who had proved stubborn were not only flogged, but ' turned down ' to the next form. Thus did Keate suppress the last attempt at rebellion which he had to encounter. Stories illustrating the gentler side of Keate's character are not so common or so popular, but they are none the less true. It is for instance stated that he freely pardoned a boy named Dallas who had thrown a stone at him in school, on his giving himself up and apologising." When two small boys pleaded in excuse for being late for ' absence ' that they had been to see Gray's monument at Stoke Poges, he inflicted no punishment, and good-humouredly expressed a hope that they would turn out as good poets as Gray.3 One of them, John Moultrie, afterwards acquired some reputation as a poet ; the other, James Chapman, eventually became Keate's son-in-law. The Assistant-Masters were in some degree responsible for ' Information of Mr. Ayshford Sanford. '' Report of the Public Schools Commission, Eton Evidence, 3665. The following passage occurred in the first edition of this work : — " That he could restrain himself, even when armed with the birch, is shown by his forbearance towards an eminent living statesman who, when acting as praepostor, got into trouble for omitting from the bill the name of a friend who had missed a lesson. Before command- ing the prsepostor to kneel down, Keate charged him with a breach of trust. The boy, showing even then a promptitude for debate and a power of detecting microscopic differences which have since be- come famous, defended himself by saying — ' I beg your pardon, sir ; it would have been a breach of trust if I had undertaken the office of praepostor by my own wish ; but it was forced upon me.' Keate yielded, and let him off." Mr. Gladstone identifies himself with the hero of this story, which I had given upon the authority of one of his schoolfellows and personal friends still living. He states, however, that he does not remem- ber pleading the excuse attributed to him, and that he was certainly flogged. As the anecdote has been quoted from my work by bio- graphers and others, I give this explanation, in preference to omit- ting all mention of the affair. ' Poems oj John Moultrie, (ed. 1876) vol. i. p. xiv. KEATE'S SYSTEM. 369 the frequency of floggings, for Keate could not, even if so minded, have neglected to administer the punishment de- manded by them without undermining their authority over the boys. On the other hand he could easily have given them general rules as to the manner in which different offences should be expiated. That he did not attempt to introduce a more rational system of punishment is due less to any idio- syncrasy of his than to the fact that in his day flogging was regarded as the normal means of coercing boys at Eton, at Harrow, and at Winchester alike. Dr. Longley, for instance, is said to have flogged no less than fifty-three Harrovians one morning for missing 4 o'clock bell on the occasion of a steeple- chase.' Those who knew Keate best, agree in saying that his roughness of manner was assumed for the purpose of coercing the boys, for although inclined to be irritable, he was in private life kind, courteous, and gentle. His manner was certainly altered, with his costume, after his resignation of the Head-Mastership. Keate was a great master of oratory, and the hints which he gave to sixth-form boys when they were rehearsing their speeches to him in private, proved invaluable to them in their subsequent careers as statesmen, as preachers, or as pleaders in the courts of law. An English speech was seldom tolerated in his day, and all the speeches, whether in Latin, Greek, or English, were real orations, not mere recitations of poetry. It was generally remarked that the best speeches and declamations in the Upper School were those delivered by the members of the different dramatic companies, which from time to time were organised among the boys. Moultrie mentions the performances in Long Chamber in his own day : — " 'Twas a sight Worthy of more fastidious eyes than ours — That motley pageant of fantastic garbs Assembled in our green-room ; boyhood's limbs ' Longman's Magazine, vol. xii. p. 54. B B 37° THE A TRICALS . Robed in the grave habiliments of age ; — The corpulent round paunch of monk or friar,— The rustic with red mass of hair unkempt, Smock-frock, and scarlet hose, and nether vest Of buckskin, begg'd or borrowed, for the nonce E'en from the haunch of veritable clown — And (stranger, more fantastic than all else) The garb, shape, face, and voice of womanhood, Aped by some beardless boy. . . " All alike, Actors and audience, willing both to please And to be pleased, received and gave, by turns Reciprocal enjoyment ; well I wot None such was ever felt in Drury Lane ! " ' The poet was himself one of the actors, and, according to one of his contemporaries, unrivalled in domestic pathos.'' He was one of the managers of the most successful series of performances which have ever been given by Eton boys. It was in 1 8 1 7 or 1 8 1 8 that a room was hired, near the river, to serve as a theatre, and a company formed consisting of Oppidans as well as Collegers. Before long, a better room was found at a coal-merchant's in Datchet Lane, Windsor, between the bridge and the site of the present South- Western Railway Station. Howard, afterwards Earl of Carlisle, and Germain Lavie, were the first managers, and they were succeeded by Robert Crawfurd and John Moultrie. Lord Tullamore, one of the principal actors, is said to have moved the whole audience to tears on one occasion by his imperson- ation of Sir Philip Blandford.s Praed was also a member of the company. These theatricals were winked at by the authorities, and patronised by the dames and the Masters' wives, who used openly to go down to Datchet Lane in their ' The Dream of Life, pp. 66, 67. ^ He alludes to his own acting in the first three stanzas of his Codiva in the Etonian. 3 Poetry of the College Maga- zine. THEATRICALS. 371 sedan chairs. At last it became impossible for Keate to ignore performances which were so much talked about, and he told the managers plainly that they had been sent to Eton to become scholars and not actors, and that the theatre must be closed.' Some years later, another attempt at amateur theatricals was made, and several performances were given at Barney Levi's (afterwards Turnock's) rooms in the High Street of Eton. E. S. Creasy, afterwards Chief Justice in Ceylon, took the part of Sir Anthony Absolute, Lord Hillsborough that of Sir Lucius O'Trigger, P. Y. Savile that of Bob Acres, C. O. Goodford, afterwards Provost of Eton, that of Mrs. Malaprop, and George Williams that of Lydia Languish. However, the Head-Master one day seized a copy of the playbill in Chambers, and called up all the dramatis personos in turn, beginning with the ladies.'^ Two of the Masters, Benjamin Heath Drury and Henry Hartopp Knapp, were enthusiastic admirers of the drama, and were in the habit of going up to town whenever any special ' star ' was to perform. They used often to leave Eton on Saturday afternoon and return on the Monday morning in time (or occasionally not in time) for early school, looking over exercises as they drove along in their curricle. Some- times they would each take a favoured pupil to see the play, and sup and sleep at the ' Hummums,' or the ' Bedford,' in Covent Garden. Captain Gronow relates how on one of these expeditions, when their young companions were Lord Sunderland and a son of Lord Eldon, they sallied forth at night in search of adventures, and " created such a disturbance, that after several chivalrous encounters with the watchmen, they were taken to Bow Street, and had to be bailed out of durance vile by the secretary of the all-powerful Chancellor." 3 ' Etoniana, pp. 186 — 191. = Ibid., pp. 192, 193; Wilkinson's Reminiscences, pp. 196 — 199. 3 Recollections and Anecdotes, Second Series, pp. 79 — 81. B B 2 372 DRURY AND KNAP P. Although Gronow was one of Knapp's pupils, the truth of this story has been called in question by another who says : — " Knapp was an effeminate, timid little man, who would as soon have walked into Van Amburgh's den as into a street row." ' Elsewhere however we read : — " He was as fond of prize-fighting as of theatres, and said that a scholar ought to attend prize-fights and horse- races, if he wanted to get an idea of what the Olympian games were like. At one time he owned a terrier named ' Keph,' whom he backed to kill pole-cats against a bull- dog of Sir Christopher Willoughby's at a cock-pit in Peascod Street, Windsor." ^ The time in question must have been about 1810. The following story is vouched for as " literally true " : — " Drury presented himself at Chambers before 1 1 o'clock school one day with a conspicuous black eye. ' Bless me, Mr. Drury,' said Keate, ' you've met with a terrible accident.' ' Yes, Dr. Keate,' replied he, perfectly unabashed, ' I went over to Harrow yesterday, and taking a ball in the cricket field it ran up my bat, and struck me violently, as you see, in my right eye.' ' Dear me, Dfury,' said little Knapp, who was standing close under his wing, ' the ball must have cannoned, for you've a dreadful bruise under your left ear.' " Dr. Keate is said to have forced his way into the bedroom of one of this pair one day, in order to ascertain whether he was really too unwell to attend to his scholastic duties, and to have found the soi-disant invalid under the bed-clothes, but dressed for an expedition to London.^ Another Master, who was believed to be an opium-eater, used to behave in an extraordinary way in school, talking to the boys about politics and the like.* With men of this calibre as his Assistants on • Letter from the late Mr. R. Crawfurd. - Seven Years at Eton, p. 399. 3 Edinburgh Review, vol. c.xlvi. p. 515. ♦ Information of the late Earl of Abingdon. ASSISTANT-MASTERS. 373 the one hand, and an easy-going Provost on the other, the Head-Master had to bear the chief burden of maintaining discipHne in a large school. This should be remembered by those who very justly condemn his system. Most of the Assistants whom he himself selected proved more efficient than their predecessors, and thus prepared the way for Hawtrey's reforms. Without prejudice to the memory of others, the names of James Chapman, John Wilder, and Edward Coleridge, may be specially mentioned in this con- nexion. Of Capel Lofft, a very able but singular man, author of Self-Formation, it is said that having received the offer of an Assistant-Master's place, he wrote two letters, the one accepting it, the other declining it, in such a manner that their covers were indistinguishable, and then consigned the one to the post and the other to the fire, without knowing which answer he had despatched. He became a Master, but for a few months only, in 1829. Keate always looked with favour on such associations as the boys formed among themselves for mutual improve- ment in English composition and oratory. There were several small debating societies at Eton in the early years of the present century, but they proved shortlived, with one exception, and the continuance of that one to the present time is probably due to the fact that it was never from the very first exclusively a debating society. The existing insti- tution was founded in 181 1, by Charles Fox Townshend, a young man of great promise, who died at the age of twenty- two, while he was a candidate for the representation in Par- liament of the University of Cambridge ; and he successfully resisted all proposals that it should be named the " Eton Literary Society," or the " Eton Debating Society." The " Eton Society," as it was formally named, was, and is still, a social club as well as a school for oratory. It deserves notice as an institution not founded, not inspected, not patronised, not coerced, by masters or other adults, flourishing for seventy- 374 THE ETON SOCIETY. seven years, and apparently as durable as the Jockey Club or Brooks's. In former times the members were known as " Literati" and Keate used to make a point of calling one of them up in the Ibatn forte satire of Horace. The boy, well aware of what was expected of him, would translate ''docti sumus," " I belong to the Literati" to which Keate would as regularly reply : — " Oh, you do, do you 1 I am very glad to hear it. I wish more boys belonged to it." " And then,'' says Dr. Jelf, " came the well-known ' Silence ! be quiet ; ' with which he pretended to check the applause which his facetiousness had provoked." ' The term Literati fell into disuse before long, and the club acquired the less dignified name of " Pop," by which it is still generally known — a name for which youthful etymologists have discovered many a far-fetched derivation. Some have said that it was meant to indicate the /^/-ularity of the members ; others have declared that the weekly speeches were as frothy as ginger-/^?/ ; but the best authorities are now agreed in thinking that the Eton Society owes its mono- syllabic name to the rooms it originally occupied in the house of a Mrs. Hatton, who kept what might with equal propriety be called/^/«2« in Latin, or \oViy-pop shop in English.^ This situa- tion was purposely chosen with a view to the establishment of an ordinary for members, who bound themselves to break- fast together at least once a week. The number of members was originally fixed at 20, but it was soon raised to 30.3 In 1816, it had dwindled down to about 14, and the Society was saved from dissolution only by energetic protests on the part of old members at Oxford and Cambridge, and especially by a letter from C. F. Townshend to the President, which was read from the chair. It ended in the following manner : — " I trust sincerely that, having braved the tempest and ridden out the storm, it may not founder from a leak within ; and as I appeal to you on our behalf who were your pro- ' Contemporary Review, vol. iii. I '^ Ibid.; Etoniana, p. 207. 562. I ^ Eton College Magazine, p. 45. THE ETON SOCIETY. 375 genitors, so do I more especially on your own, lest at some future period you should repent this destructive measure, and like the Trojan ^neas, who, bewailing the fate of that Troy which he had both seen and known, burst forth into that pathetic exclamation — ' Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres ! ' " The weekly debates were of a historical or literary character, one of the rules being that political and polemical subjects should be excluded. When some of the members showed a disposition to air their views on questions of the day, Keate informally managed to check it. Nevertheless the merits and demerits of corporal punishment have more than once been formally discussed in ' Pop ' by boys to whom the Head- Master's birch has been a dread reality.' The quality of the debates has varied very much from time to time, according to the prevailing tone among the elder boys. Thus Mr. Gladstone and some of his contemporaries devoted a good deal of trouble to the preparation of their speeches, and so revived an interest in the proceedings which had been declin- ing since the departure of W. M. Praed. Not content indeed with weekly debates, a few of the members used to declaim before a smaller audience in Trotman's Garden on the Eton Wick Road of a summer afternoon. Sir Francis Doyle records that a Master once overheard them " sneering, shout- ing, and boo-hoo-ing in the most unaccountable manner," and would have had the orators flogged for drunkenness, if the future Premier had not, with some difficulty, convinced him of their sobriety.^ ' Private business,' or discussion in Committee on the management of the Society, was often found more interesting than the formal debates, and it gave wider opportunities for the display of individual character. ' Pop ' has always had a great social power. Collegers were not excluded from it, and there alone, in the days when ' MS. Journals of the Eton I " Reminiscences, pp. 37, 38. Society, passim. I 376 THE E TON SOCIE T \ \ they were generally despised, was it possible for them to make friendships with their Oppidan schoolfellows. In a lesser degree, it was a neutral meeting ground for the leaders of the ' wet bobs ' and of the ' dry bobs.' The Eton Society never had sufficient funds in hand to buy many books, and it was to meet an obvious want that a library was established in 1821, over Williams's shop, chiefly by the exertions of Winthrop Mackworth Praed. The number of subscribing members was limited to lOO at the top of the School.' For several years after the last issue of the Miniature, the literary talent of Eton found no expression save in the Latin verses and themes which had to be written week after week ; but in 1818 the taste for English composition asserted itself strongly, and two rival magazines were started in manuscript. One of these, exclusively the production of Collegers, attracted little attention ; '■' the other, the College Magazine, got as far as an eighteenth number in the course of a twelvemonth, and might perhaps have lasted longer, if John Moultrie, one of the principal contributors, had not forsaken it for a magazine of his own called the Horce Otiosce. A selection of poetry from the College Magazine and the HorcB Otiosm was made by Walter Blunt, a Colleger, and fifty copies were printed for private circulation in 18 19. In the following summer, Praed started another manuscript magazine, entitled the Apis Matina, which was so favourably received that he determined on trying his hand at something more ambitious after the holidays. He was fortunate in numbering among his personal friends several young men of singular ability, and it was by their assistance that he won for his comparatively short-lived periodical, the Etonian, a unique position in English literature. It was mainly the work of schoolboys, for contributions from ' The Etonian, (ed. 1824) vol. ii. Colleger. G. B. Maturin and W. G. p. 208. . ; Cookesley were the editors. ^ It was called the Linger, or i THE 'ETONIAN: 377 old Etonians were not allowed to occupy more than a limited space in each number, and several pieces which in the table of contents are credited to undergraduates, had in reality- been written by them before they left Eton. Thus, for instance, Moultrie's lines on My Brother's Grave, and The Hall of my Fathers, were originally composed for the Horce Otiosce, and several articles were reproduced from the pages of the Apis Matina. The contents of the Etonian were of a miscellaneous character, though the grave element in it bore but a small proportion to the gay. Each number began with a lively account of the proceedings of a fictitious society by whose members the magazine was supposed to be conducted, under the presidency of Peregrine Courtenay, King of Clubs. A rough woodcut of his Majesty, enlarged from a playing card, always appeared on the cover, to the disgust of the savants of the Quarterly Reviezv, who rejoiced in the simplicity of their own plain drab. Blunt and Praed were the editors, the for- mer undertaking the correction of proofs and other similar drudgery, the latter pouring forth brilliant prose and yet more brilliant verse, with extraordinary facility. Praed was indeed the mainspring of the whole enterprise, and the most frequent contributor. As we read The Eve of Battle, Laura, The County Ball, Gog, Surly Hall, and other poems of his, it is difficult to realise that they were the productions of a boy in his teens. John Moultrie, William Sidney Walker, and Henry Nelson Coleridge, were but little older ; and the most noteworthy point in connexion with the Etonian is that so many of its con- tributors had at a very early age acquired a refinement of ideas and powers of expression rarely to be found, except among full-grown men of high culture. The story of the Etonian has been told more than once,' and we need not dwell on it here. Suffice it to say that the ' Yimght's Passages of aWorking I Coleridge's Memoir of W. M. Life, voJ. i. pp. 280 — 294 ; Derwent I Praed, pp. xvii — xxiii. 378 THE 'Etonian: first number went out of print in the course of a few weeks, that it caused the flagging sale of the Microcosm and the Miniature to revive, that it was favourably noticed in the Quarterly Review, and that its principal editor went up to Cambridge with a reputation higher than that of any Etonian since the days of George Canning.' It might have been supposed that an important magazine like the Etonian would have left no room for any other literary undertaking in the School, yet we find that another periodical was being published weekly under different auspices. The Salt-bearer, as it was called, was started in May 1820, and its editor, " Mr. Benjamin Book- worm," went out of his way to find fault with the Apis Matina on several occasions. " Peregrine Courtenay " retaliated in the first number of the Etonian, and the feud was not appeased until the suppression of the Salt-bearer, in April 1821. The article in which Praed announced to his supporters the literary decease of his rival, is highly characteristic, and it gives his estimate of the quality of the four Eton magazines which had got into print : — "When I throw a glance over the journey which our Etonian writers have travelled, I fancy that I see three dif- ferent routes leading towards the same point. In the centre, Messrs. GrifiSn and Grildrig are riding a couple of clever nags, at a good round trot ; on one side, Mr. Bookworm is bestriding what is commonly termed ' a safe Cob for an infirm Gentleman ; ' which scrambles over his ground in such a manner, that the spectators imagine he will come to a dead stop every instant ; on the other side is Mr. Courtenay, — whip and spur, whip and spur, the whole way ; up hill and down hill, bush and briar, furze and fence, — it is the same thing. Mr. C, they say, never uses a curb ; and the animal occasionally waxes so formidably obstinate, that he has infinite difficulty in keeping his seat." "^ ' Coleridge's Memoir of IV. M. I "^ The Etoman, (ed. 1824) vol. iii. Praed, p. xxvi. I p. 173. ETON MAGAZINES. 379 The real name of Mr. Benjamin Bookworm has never been pubHshed, but, whoever he was, he can hardly escape the reproach of dulness. A continuation of the Salt-hearer, entitled the Student, was started in June 1821, by "Solomon Sap, Esq., of the College of Eton," but it never reached a second number.' The Etonian itself came to an end in the following month, when Praed ceased to be an Eton boy. However, it was not long before the principal writers in the Etonian, Praed, Moultrie, Walker, and H. N. Coleridge,'' combined with Derwent Coleridge, T. Babington Macaulay, and Henry Maiden, to bring out a London serial — Knight's Quarterly Magazine. There is a gap of some six years in the annals of Eton literature after the abdication of " Peregrine Courtenay, King of Clubs." The Eton Miscellany, which appeared in 1827, was in every way less ambitious than the Etonian, though several of its contributors have in after life attained greater eminence than the most successful of the staff of the earher magazine. One of them has been Prime Minister of England, a second has been the chief organiser of the Colonial Church, while others have distinguished themselves in politics, in literature, and at the bar.3 The Oppidan, an Eton publication of the year 1828, gave flashes of the old spirit, especially in some lines on the Louvre, but only two numbers were published. The Eton College Magazine, which went through eight numbers Townsend, R. Streatfield, and J. A. Kinglake. 3 The writers were W. E. Glad- stone, G. A. Selwyn, J. Milnes Gaskell, Francis Hastings Doyle ' This and several other Eton Magazines which do not exist in the British Museum may be seen in the Hope Collection at Oxford. " The other writers in the Etonian were the Hon. W. Ashley, Edmund Beales (of Hyde Park celebrity), W. Crichton, the Hon. F. Curzon, Richard Durnford (Bishop of Chichester),C.Fursdon, H.Neech, W. H. Ord, T. P. Outram, J. L. Petit, Walter Trower (Bishop of Gibraltar), Chauncey Hare (Sir F. H. D.), John Hanmer (Lord Hanmer), Frederick Rogers (Lord Blachford), J. W. Colvile (Sir J. W. C), W. E. Jelf, J. H. Law, Percival A. Pickering, L. H. Shadwell, W. Skirrow, Charles Wilder, and A. H. Hallam (the subject of In M'e?noriam). 38o CRICKET. in 1832,' and its successor, the Kaleidoscope, are interesting only in so far as they deal with incidents of school life.= The records of cricket at Eton become more abundant as Sheep Bridge and Sixth Form Bench. we enter upon a period within the memory of many persons now living. Apart from differences in the code of rules, it is ' The writers were John Wickens, the Hon. G. W. Lyttelton (Lord Lyttelton), Thomas Phinn, A. J. Ellis, W. P. BoUand, and C. G. Wynne. - The writers were A. J Ellis, T. B. Charlton, H. Rycroft, G. Cunningham, the Hon. G. W. Lyttelton (Lord Lyttelton) Francis Hastings Doyle (Sir F. H. D.), E. Goulburn (Dean of Norwich), J. ■ Hamilton, J. Jermyn, R. Lloyd, James G. Lonsdale, and Alfred Mills. CRICKET. 3S1 worthy of remark that seventy years ago the game was specially patronised by Collegers ; an eleven selected from their scanty number, for there were seldom more than fifty of them on the list, used annually to contend on equal terms with an eleven selected from the rest of the School. In one particular year, when there were no less than eight of them in the Eton eleven, the Collegers had every reason to anticipate an easy victory over the Oppidans, but in the end they were ignominiously beaten. So mortified were they at the result of the match that they dressed their bats in black crape, and left them fastened up against the wall in Long Chamber, until John Harding retrieved the honour of College by an innings of 74 against Epsom, which in those days was considered wonderful. Traditions of Harding's play survived for many a long year after he and his friends had left Eton, and it is stated that he hit a ball from the middle of the Upper Shooting Fields (now called Upper Club) over the chestnut-trees, into the Lower Shooting Fields. Such a feat was without pre- cedent, and the hero of the day was carried back to College in triumph by his jubilant school-fellows.' The bat, too, received special honours, and it is still in existence, having been bequeathed by its original owner to Mr. G. R. Dupuis, son of one of the eleven of 18 14, and himself a famous cricketer. There may possibly be one or two old Etonians still living who can quote by heart a poem written at the time by W. M. Stone, a Colleger, in which the following passage occurs : — " It was a bat full fair to see, And it drove the balls right lustily ; Without a flaw, without a speck. Smooth as fair Hebe's ivory neck, It was withal so light, so neat. That Harding called it—' Mrs. Keate.' " ^ ' Bailey's Magazine, vol. vii. p. of part of the poem are in the 348 ; Sporting Magazine, vol. Ixxv. possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate p. 15. and Mr. H. Perry. " Etoniana, p. 113; IMS. copies 382 CRICKET. Another noted player was G. W. Barnard, Captain of Montem in 1823 : — " He who hits the balls such thumps, King of cricket-bats and stumps." ' The first of the long series of matches between Eton and Harrow was played at Lord's in 1818, and was won by Harrow, as was also that played in 1822.^ The tide of fortune turned after this, and the Etonians won easily in 1823, 1824, 1825, 1827, 1828, and again in 1832, when they made 249 runs in one innings against 49 and 44. Harrow won in 1833. The Wykehamists won their first match against the Etonians in 1826, and the two rival elevens were alternately victorious in the matches played at Lord's in 1829, 1830, 1832, and 1833.^ Contests of this kind between the different Public Schools were not thought so much of then as they are nowadays, and used to take place during the summer holidays, when few boys were in London. The great events in the cricketing year at Eton were the matches played in the Upper Shooting Fields against King's College, Marylebone, and Epsom. " Oh ! who can e'er forget. When the day fix'd for final conflict came. How breathlessly we rush'd, from school let loose. To view the mighty game ! — how from afar, Between the umbrageous trees of Poet's Walk, The slim white figures of the combatants Glanced on our eager sight ! with what suspense, — What alternations swift of hope and fear. We watch'd the progress of the game ! . . . . Then, if at last The fortune of the day declared for us, — ' Montem Ode quoted in English Spy, vol. i. p. 75. " The boys who played for Eton in 1818 were a 'scratch team,' not the regular school eleven. The Etonian, (ed. 1824) vol. iii. p. 229. 5 Lillywhite's Public School Matches: BOATING. 383 With, what a maddening shout of victory We rent the welkin ! Waterloo itself (For Waterloo was fought in those wild days) Scarce seem'd a mightier triumph than some match Won against Epsom." ' The costume of the players about the year 1820 is described as "a white jean jacket, fitting easily to the figure, with the blue tie of Eton ; nankeen shorts and ribbed silk stockings, with socks tightly folded over the ankle, and the white hat jauntily put on." = Whenever there was a cricket- match, Keate used to 'call absence' in the Playing Fields, instead of in the School Yard. Boating was not formally recognised by the School author- ities before 1840, but ever since the beginning of the present century, boys had been practically free from interference while they were on the river, although the road to it was ' out of bounds.' Keate is known to have interfered in the matter on one occasion only, when, in 1 829, he had heard by chance that the eight intended to row up to Surly before Easter. He tried to prevent this by threatening to expel any one who should take part in the expedition, but finding that the boys paid little attention to his threats, he resolved to waylay them, and catch them in the act of disobedience. Unfortunately for himself, he allowed his purpose to transpire, and the boys contrived to hoax him effectually. On the appointed day, a crew of watermen, dressed up to represent the Eton eight, and wearing masks over their faces, started from the Brocas, in the presence of a crowd of townspeople who had come out to see what would happen. Keate caught sight of them from the bank before they had reached Upper Hope, and shouted : " Foolish boys, I know you all." " Lord , I know you." "Watt, you had better come ashore." "Come here, or you will all be expelled." The boat, however, pursued its course ' Moultrie's Dream ef Ufe. I ° Bailey's Magazine, vol. vii. p. I 346. 384 BOA TING. steadily, several of the Masters giving chase on horseback, and the ruse was not discovered until the crew disembarked and took off their masks with a loud " hurrah." ' Keate was furious, and vowed that he would keep the whole school at Eton two days beyond the time fixed for the beginning of the holidays, unless at least thirty of the boys who had hooted him and other Masters from behind the hedges gave them- selves up. As this threat produced no effect, some of the Masters, instigated by Charles Yonge, asked their respective pupils to say whether or not they had shouted on the Brocas. Eighteen confessed and were accordingly flogged, and twenty- four others who would not incriminate themselves were detained two days.'' " Most of the Masters enjoy the joke," wrote Henry Drury of Harrow, who was staying at Eton with his brother. " Keate sits in sullen retirement and eats his own soul." 3 The most important result of the affair was that the watermen and other ' cads ' were thenceforth forbidden to set foot within the wall of the Long Walk at Eton. It was at one time customary for watermen to be employed to row stroke in the ' lower boats,' but in course of time the boys found that they could manage well enough by themselves, and ever since 1828 the stroke oar has been taken by the captain of each crew. The distinction between ' upper boats ' and ' lower boats ' was much more strongly marked in those days than it is at present, boys in the ' remove ' and fourth form being freely admitted to the ' lower boats.' The names of the boats and their order of precedence varied considerably from year to year, the ten-oared Monarch alone retaining its position as the first on the list, with the captain of the boats ' Sporting Magazine, vol. Ixxiv. p. 352 ; Information of the late Rev. G. Williams. ° MS. Diary in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate. 3 Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodg- son, vol. ii. pp. 193, 194. In the first edition, I stated in a footnote that this incident " took place about the year 1822." This error of mine has been repeated and emphasised by the author of Seven Years at Eton, pp. 405, 406. 386 THE FOURTH OF JUNE. Navy, lieutenants, captains, and admirals, according to the precedence to which their respective boats were entitled." It was not unusual for a boat to carry in its stern an extra person called a ' sitter,' and it was in this capacity that Canning was rowed up the river on the 4th of June, 1824, when, notwithstanding the great breadth of the Monarch of the day, he is said to have been very nervous as to its safety.^ Prince George of Cambridge was a ' sitter,' in 1831 and 1833.3 In later times sitters have generally provided a dozen or two of champagne in return for the compliment paid to them. The procession has, from time immemorial, started from the Brocas soon after ' six o'clock absence,' and, in Keate's time, it used to be accompanied along the bank by a crowd of Eton boys on horseback. Every old screw in the neighbourhood was in requisition, but the young riders were not over-fastidious.'* The crews of the boats, and the members of the fifth and sixth forms, had supper al fresco in a field opposite to Surly Hall, after which" everybody returned to the Brocas to see the fireworks. Strange as it may appear to persons educated under a dif- ferent system, these festivities went on year after year, not allowed, not forbidden. Provost Goodall used to say : — " I wonder why Mrs. Goodall always dines early on the Fourth of June, and orders her carriage at six." ' Lock up,' was later than usual that night, although Dr. Keate professed him.self ignorant of the true reason of this annual indulgence,5 and, as a matter of fact, the Masters often went to see the fireworks. • Sporting Magazine, vol. Ixxiv. P- 354- ^ Annual Register, vol. Ixix. p. 4S0 ; Seven Years at Etoii, (4th ed.) p. 418. 3 Berkshire Chronicle, 1831 and 1833- ^ See Praed's Surly Hall, in the Etonian, No. x., and Durnford's Rashleigh Letter Bag, in No. ix. 5 Durnford's Rashleigh Letter Bag, in the Etonian, No. ix. Little boys could on a holiday reach Surly by 12.20 P.M., and spend a happy hour playing skittles. It was almost the only place where they enjoyed perfect freedom from fagging. THE FOURTH OF JUNE. 3^ knowing that they were not Hkely to be recognised in the dark. A very inteUigent boy in the Middle Division wrote thus to his mother with reference to the Fourth of June, 1826 : — " The scene was remarkably gay and animated. His Highness the Duke of York was present, and Lord Chester- field, and several other persons of distinction. The fireworks were beautiful, and extremely well arranged. Mr. Dupuis came on purpose to see the sight, though it is not positively sanctioned. Messrs. Chapman and Hawtrey were also there, Keate was there with his family, and yet to such a pitch of ridiculous absurdity is the ignorance and opposition of the Masters kept up, that positively at absence, though every one knows that we are locked up at a quarter before ten on this night, purely for the celebration of this regatta, Keate thus addressed us : — ' Boys, it is an old custom to have you locked up later than usual this night, that you may enjoy your game of cricket rather later than usual, and that it may be harder contested.' Was there ever such nonsense t " ' That Keate himself went to see the fireworks, as stated, is very doubtful, for, five years later, he excused himself from accompanying the King to witness the procession of boats, on the score that " he did not know there was such a thing." = Like the Provost, he used to dine at S on the Fourth of June and Election Saturday, and when Mrs. Keate and her guests were starting immediately after for the Brocas, he used to say that he supposed that they were going to donkey races on Dorney Common. In the meanwhile, he had discussed all the neces- sary arrangements with the Captain of the Oppidans, although even with him he ignored the existence of a Captain of the Boats.3 Strange as these fictions now appear, they were not stranger than some which were then in daily use in the courts of law. ■ Gaskell's Records of aii Eton Schoolboy (privately printed), p. 17. ' Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson, vol. ii. p. 209. 3 Information of the Rev. J. C. Keate. C C 2 388 BOA TING. Of course, the ' wet bobs ' of that time cared for boating for its own sake, independently of the pageants of the 4th of June and Election Saturday. " On the breast. Of Thames, it was our pride in trim-built skiffs To shoot amain — now singly, now in crews, With lusty tug of oar, in eager race Contending." ' ' Upper Sixes,' ' Lower Sixes,' ' Sculling sweepstakes,' ' Pulling Sweepstakes,' ' Double Sculling,' and races between Fours or Eights of different houses, were all instituted as early as the days of Keate. The idea of singling out the best eight oarsmen in the School to row together in one boat seems to have originated about the year 1820, in anticipation of a race against Westminster, but the race was given up in consequence of the disapproval of the authorities.^ The first race between the two Schools was rowed at Putney, on Election Monday, 1829, for 100/. a-side, each boat being steered by a professional. The Etonians won easily, although their stroke. Lord Water- ford, and several other members of the crew, did not belong to the regular boats.3 There was no race in 1830; but in the following year a race took place in this middle of the summer half, the course being from Maidenhead to a ' rye-peck' below Monkey Island, and back again up stream. On this occasion also Eton was successful.'* The anomalous relation then existing between the authorities and the boys is well illustrated by the fact that Keate never heard a word about the race until it was over. The first notice he received of it was at 6 o'clock ' absence ' that afternoon, when, amid loud cheers, a St. Bernard dog, belonging to one of the Masters, Mr. E. Coleridge, was led up to him covered all over with the pale blue rosettes ' Moultrie's Dream of Life. ^yo. " Blake-Humfrey's Eton Boating Book, p. viii. ? Ibid. p. 5. See also Sporting Magazine, new series, vol. xxiv. p. ■• Sporting Magazine, new series, vol. iii. p. 137; Blake-Humfrey, p, 10. M , I ) ftl ^1 t f < '^ u o Q ^ K POACHING. 389 the boys had worn. He asked the Praepostor by his side what this demonstration meant, and when told : — " Please, sir, we've just beaten Westminster," he smiled, and, as usual, said : — " Foolish boys 1 " The victorious crew, however, was beaten soon afterwards by the Leander Club in a race from Windsor Bridge to Surly and back.' It must be remembered that there was no lock at Boveney until 1840, and the distance could be accomplished in somewhat heavy boats in a few minutes over half an hour.^ " But even this. For some adventurous spirits, was too dull And spiritless a joy ! Such burnt to win The sportsman's noble fame, albeit alloy'd By ill report of poacher ; — with the dawn, O'erleaping the restraint of bolts and bars. They ranged, with dog and gun, the near preserves, Or from forbidden waters bore the lines Rich with nocturnal spoil." ^ Capel Lofft records how he and one of his school-fellows kept two or three couple of harriers near Black Potts for the purpose of hunting rabbits. There was other game in abund- ance just across the river, and they did not long resist the temptation to go in quest of it. Their first expedition into the Little Park met with undeserved success ; but on repeating the offence a few days later, Capel Lofft narrowly escaped being caught, and in his anxiety to get back safely over the wall dropped his gun.'* Another boy met with a worse mis- fortune close to the same spot. Having killed a hare, and hidden it away under a long coat borrowed for the occasion he came in sight of a keeper who, after a short chase, de- liberately fired at him. The bullet grazed his leg, and he was ■ Sporting Magazine, n&w series, vol. iii. p. 323 ; Berkshire Chronicle, ]83i, p. 337. These two accounts do not quite tally. ' Sporting Magazine, vol. Ixxiv. P- 352. ' Moultrie's Dream of Life. ^ Self-Formation, vol. i. pp. 175 —177. 390 DIVERSIONS FROM STUDY. obliged to ' stay out ' on the sick-list for some time, his plea being that he had met with an accident while scrambling through a hedge, for he could not well complain of the keeper without compromising himself There was hardly a house from which the boys could not escape with ease for a poaching expedition of a morning, or for a visit to the ' Christopher ' at night. " Is all right ? " enquired the future Lord Kesteven, as he was preparing to descend from his window one dark evening to meet a friend. " Right as my left leg,'' answered a voice from below, and the boy dropped into the arms of Ben. Drury. Driving was a fashionable, though of course a forbidtien, amusement at Eton during the first quarter of the present century. The names of some of the best whips are given in the College Magazine, and a few years later we read of one of the townspeople : — " Savager keeps a decent nag, But's very shy of lending, Since she put down her tandem drag For fear of Keate's offending." ' Nevertheless gigs and tandems are enumerated together with "cricket, boating, beagles, racings, rows," in a list of Eton amusements, in a magazine printed and published almost under the eyes of the authorities in 1833.^ There were other pastimes far less legitimate. Bull-baiting went on with vigour in Bachelor's Acre, and badger-baits, dog- fights, and cat and duck hunts, were organised for the special edification of the Eton boys. It was a good thing for the moral tone of the School when the ' cads,' who were the prime movers in all kinds of wickedness, and the worst possible companions for the sons of gentlemen, were expelled from their place of daily resort — the Long Walk.s ' English Spy, vol. i. p. 86. ° Kaleidoscope, p. 205. ^ Th following definition occurs in a magazine published at Eton in 1833 : — " Cad, a fellow minus coat, with ragged hat ; that administers BULLYING. 391 Brute beasts were not the only sufferers at the hands of boys whose feeHngs had become blunted by familiarity with cruel sights. Independently of the organised system of fagging, which in those days pressed more heavily on lower boys than it does now, we hear of gross cases of bullying which would not be tolerated at present. To quote the eloquent words of Dr. Hawtrey : — " The Objects of such kind of Ill-usage are not those over whom there is any lawful or conventional Right ; — they are the Weak, the Timid, the Eccentric, and the Unsociable ; sometimes those who have none of these Failings, but who from some Peculiarity of Character are not acceptable to all, who are nevertheless capable of warm Friendship, who are even possessed of no common mental Powers, which might have expanded into great private and public Usefulness, but which may be also compressed and concentrated in a sensitive Mind, till they waste and devour it, till they lead to Mis- anthropy, or perhaps to the more fatal Error of doubting the justice of Providence, because Man is unjust; of madly imagining that Christianity itself is a Fable, because those, who call themselves Christians, have acted — in pure Reck- lessness — as if they were Heathens." ' In the lecture from which this passage is taken, Hawtrey goes on to mention two case's, known to be those of Shelley and Sidney Walker, in which the harm "done by ill-used authority and ill-used strength" was especially enduring and painful. Shelley, "a stripling pale and lustrous-eyed," was equally indifferent to the work and the games of the to the pleasures of Eton boys ; cheats them before their eyes ; praises their discernment, and picks their pockets. One who is acquainted with boating, and ex- pert in teaching the art of shirking. He is adored by the larlcers, hated by the saps, and winked at by the higher powers." — The Kaleidoscope, p. 107. Shampo Carter, Joe Can- non, Foxey Hall, Pickey Powell, Jem Flowers, and others, are com- memorated in some doggerel verses in the Eui^lish Spy, vol. i. pp. 82 — 86. ' Sermons and Lectures (pri- vately printed, 1849), pp. iii — 112 392 PERCY BYSCHE SHELLEY. School. He refused to fag ; this of itself led to bullying, and ' Shelley-baits,' in which he was frequently chased ' up town.' In his more peaceful hours, he was addicted to quaint books and pursuits. He is said to have charged the handle of his door with electricity, which inflicted a shock on the tutor who came to enquire as to the noise caused by the machine. " Strange were his studies, and his sports no less ; Full oft, beneath the blazing summer noon. The sun's convergent rays with dire address, He turned on some old tree, and burnt it soon To ashes ; oft at eve the fire balloon, Inflated by his skill, would mount on high ; And when tempestuous clouds had veil'd the moon And lightning rent and thunder shook the sky He left his bed to gaze on Nature's revelry." ' The stump of a willow thus destroyed by Shelley stands at the northernmost point of South Meadow. Walker was a studious lad of extraordinary memory, but in other respects not less eccentric than Shelley, and not less bullied. Yet he wrote of Eton as one of the " Goshen spots Aye bright with spiritual sunshine." ^ Practical joking of a more harmless kind than that to which Shelley and Sidney Walker were exposed was rife in those days. Keate's peculiar costume was a temptation in itself. The Assistants had exchanged their cocked hats for trenchers about 1812, but Keate continued to wear what at Westminster was styled a "wind-cutter," until the end of his reign. His ordinary attire was the gown of a Doctor of Divinity worn over a black cassock. Mr. Kinglake describes the tout ensemble ' Moultrie's Stanzas, in the Eton edition of Gray's Poems. See Hogg's Life of Shelley, vol. i. pp. 27, 40—42. '' Memoir by Moultrie prefixed to the Poetical Works of W. S. Walker. See also Report of the Public School^ Commission, Eton Evidence, 3720. PRACTICAL JOKES. 393 as " a fancy dress partly resembling the costume of Napoleon, partly that of a widow- woman. " ' In 1816, some young officers took down a huge tin hat, which hung as a sign over the shop of Devereux, the Windsor hatter, and sent it in a box to Keate, with a note to the effect that the Prince Regent begged that he would appear in it on the following Election Monday. At the same time a note was sent to Devereux telling him that Keate admired the hat so much that he had taken it for his own use.^ It was not difficult to personate Keate, especially in the dusk, and Lord Norreys, afterwards Earl of Abingdon, used to amuse himself by prowling about of an evening in a cocked hat and gown, to the terror of other boys, who, like himself, had no business to be out. One night he took a pot of red paint and bedaubed the door of William Heath, one of the Assistant Masters, no one daring to interfere. On another occasion he went so far as to ' call absence ' at one of the dames' houses ; every one was taken in except the captain of the house, who was in the secret, and the housemaid who, on recognising him, gave him a quiet hint to go. Mrs. Keate disliked any attempt to caricature her husband, and once bought up a whole tray of plaster casts of him from an Italian in the street, quite forgetting that the mould re- mained for future use. One George Edwards, who gave the Government of George III. the first warning of the Cato Street Conspiracy, produced similar statuettes, to be the household gods, or oftener the targets, of Etonians.3 Some of them are still in existence. Although Keate habitually carried an umbrella in his hand, he would not allow the boys to follow his example, and on one occasion he publicly denounced the use of umbrellas, saying that those who used them ought to be regarded as "school ' Edthen, chapter xviii. ° MS. in the possession of Mr. G. F. Luttrell. 3 Knight's Passages of a Work- ing Life, vol. i. p. 228. 394 ROYAL PATRONAGE. girls " rather than Eton boys. Thus taunted, some of his hearers went by night to the neighbouring village of Upton., removed a large board inscribed — -"Seminary for Young Ladies," and fixed it above the great gateway of Upper School. Keate's rage at seeing it there the following morning was aggravated by his failure to detect the perpetrators of the joke.' Long afterwards, Lord Douro, to amuse some young friends, dining at Strathfieldsaye or at Windsor, reminded him of the incident, but the laugh was at Lord Douro's ex- pense, when Keate, resuming for a minute his Eton manner, turned upon him severely and asked what he knew about the matter. The Eton boys generally came in for a fair share of any festivities that happened to take place at Windsor. Thus, on the fiftieth anniversary of the accession of George III., a special entertainment was provided for them ; and again in June 1 8 14 they were all invited to Frogmore to meet the sovereigns who had recently dictated terms to the defeated Napoleon. The Prince Regent introduced his illustrious guests one by one to the assemblage of boys, saying that the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, and he himself each intended to procure an extra holiday for the School. The boys cheered lustily, and everybody was delighted.'' William Sidney Walker wrote to his friends : — " I have shaken hands with the King of Prussia, and touched the flap of Blucher's coat. I shall have it engraved on my tombstone." 3 Some time later, Praed wrote : — " It was a proud evening for Eton, but a troublesome one for those who made it so. The warmth of an English wel- come is enough to overpower anyone but an Englishman. Platoff swore he was more pestered by the Etonians than ' Etoniana, p. 102. I ^ Poetical Works of W. S. " The Etonian, (ed. 1824) vol. iii. | Walker, p. xx.xi. pp. 72—73- GEORGE IV. AND WILLIAM IV. 395 he had ever been by the French, and the kind old Blucher had his hand so cordially wrung, that he was unable to lift his bottle for a week afterwards." ' Blucher, not content with shaking hands, caught up some of the little boys in his arms, and kissed them in true German fashion. In the following year, many Etonians fought bravely at Waterloo under the greatest of Etonian generals. Keate announced the glorious victory publicly in the Upper School, ending with a touching allusion to the death of Lord Hay and another young soldier who had been sitting on the benches before him a few months previously.^ In 1820, many of the boys attended the funeral of their old patron and friend, George 1 1 1.3 His son and successor was never very popular at Eton, and at one time there was an idea of presenting an address of sympathy from the School to Queen Caroline, but it met with scant support,* and Praed thus relates what eventually took place : — • " On the night of the Coronation, when the mob said ' Queen ! ' the boys said ' King ! ' and many, forthwith, risked their crowns on behalf of his Majesty's. But whether this proceeded from the love of Loyalty, or the love of Blows, must remain a question." ^ A sixth-form boy, writing to an old schoolfellow, in March 1824, says of George IV. : — " No one sees him but when he hurries through the town in his phaeton into the Park. The Terrace is closed, except on Sundays — sentries at all the Castle gates — and he lives there in solitary grandeur, admitting only the cabinet ministers and a few of his private friends or attendants . . . We hear no more of him than if he was at the North Pole." ^ The Etonian, (ed. 1824) vol. iii. P-73- 74 Bailey's Magazine, vol. vii. p. 3 The Etonian, (ed. 1824) vol. iii. P- 1Z- ^ Ibid. vol. iii. p. 194 = Ibid. p. 368. ^ Letter from R. A. Hornby to C. W. Puller, at Youngsbury. 396 JOSEPH GOODALL. William IV., on the other hand, was quite as partial to Eton as George III. had been, and used to make a point of attending speeches in Upper School on the Fourth of June, or on Election Monday, year after year.' On the second of these visits, in 1832, he promised the reversion of the Provostship to Dr. Keate in a strange way. Pointing to Dr. Goodall he said : — "When he goes, I'll make you him." Keate was wisely silent, but the Provost, who was first a gentleman and then a courtier, said with one of his most gracious bows : — " Sire, I could never think of going before your Majesty." Some years later when asked whether he had really used these words, he replied : — " Yes, and I meant to show the King how rude he was." Dr. Goodall was in many respects the model of what a Provost of Eton should be. He excelled in all the charms of hospitality.^ Tall and stately, he had a delightful manner, dignified without pomposity, and joyous without levity. Up to the very end of his life, he continued to wear the costume of an ecclesiastical dignitary of the eighteenth century, the barber bringing a newly-dressed wig to the Provost's Lodge every morning, and taking away that worn on the previous day. A ripe classical scholar, Goodall did not confine his reading to Latin and Greek authors, and at different times in his life he took up the study of botany, of entomology, of numismatics, of modern languages, and of the antiquities and history of the great College over which he presided for upwards of thirty years. In 1816, he writes to his former pupil, Charles T. Metcalfe : — " At fifty-six a man may be indulged with a hobby ; and what nag do you imagine that I have mounted ? Oriental literature I have disclaimed ; Nimrod's propensities are not ' See the collection of Eton Addresses. " Disraeli's Coningsby, Chapter xi. The lively and almost faultless representation of Eton life in this novel is remarkable as the vifork of a writer vi^ho had not been educated at Eton. DR. GOODALL AND DR. KEATE, fj-ovi Silhouettes by Aug. Edonart, a.d. 182S. JOSEPH GOODALL. 397 mine. To the black-lettered Bibliomaniacs I own no fellowship. My limbs are not supple enough to become an active lepidopterist. I adorn my garden and my green- house in moderation, but my rage is an accumulation of calcareous matter, generally known by the name of shells." ' In his sixty-first year, he writes to say that he is learning Hebrew and Spanish with some friends : — . " If you wish to know in what part of the school I am, know by these presents that I am in the second form in Hebrew, and in the fourth in Spanish." " His uniform courtesy to boys and masters alike made him very popular, and after his death a fund amounting to no less than 2,000/. was raised for the purpose of erecting in the ' ante- chapel ' a colossal statue of him executed in marble by H. Weeks.3 The surplus, amounting to about 800/., was invested for the establishment of a " Goodall Exhibition " to be awarded triennially to an Eton Scholar, and tenable at any College, except King's College, Cambridge. This Exhibition must not be confounded with the more valuable " Goodall Scholarship " endowed by Goodall himself with 2,000/., and tenable by a superannuated Eton Scholar for four years. Dr. Goodall's weak side was the persistence with which he clung to old abuses. Intensely conservative by nature, his dread of innovations increased with his years. The phrase which styled him " the Incarnation of Eton " was not intended to be complimentary. He was somewhat roughly dealt with by a Committee of the House of Commons under Mr. Brougham in 18 18, on account of the non-observance of the statutes, and his own evasive answers on the subject, and on his return to Eton he is said to have destroyed the extracts he had made from the muniments, lest they ' Kaye's Life of Lord Metcalfe, I ' Ibid. vol. ii. p. 104. (ed. 1854) vol. ii. p. loi. I ^ Ecdesiologist, vol. iv. p. 248. 398 KEATE'S RETIREMENT. should be found to tell unfavourably against existing practices. A few years before this, the Kingsmen had made an attempt to compel the Fellows of Eton to resign their places on accepting livings, and the question was formally argued by lawyers before the Bishop of Lincoln as Visitor, one party relying on the statutes of Henry VI., the other on the dispensation of Elizabeth and the custom of more than two centuries. Judgment was given in favour of the Eton Fellows in 1815, the Bishop having as his assessors Sir William Grant, Master of the Rolls, and Sir William Scott, afterwards Lord Stowell.' After twenty-five years of hard work as Head-Master, Dr. Keate, in 1834, announced his intention of retiring to a country living near Basingstoke. Shortly before his departure, the boys combined to buy for him three pieces of plate costing little less than 600/., and when the formal presentation was made to him, he was for once fairly overcome : too much affected to return thanks, he gave vent to his feelings by taking off his cocked hat, the only occasion on which that symbol of authority was ever known to have been raised to any one. In spite of all his gruffness and flogging propensities, he was really loved and honoured, and he was warmly received when- ever he visited Eton in subsequent years. He attended the Speeches in Upper School on Election Saturday, 1840, and drove up to Surly in the evening with Mr. E. Coleridge. No sooner was the well-known face of the ex-Head-Master seen looking down upon the boats in Boveney Lock, than all the crews stood up and cheered with one accord.^ The official residence which he occupied as a Canon of Windsor long continued to be frequented by Etonian guests. ' P. Williams's Report of Pro- 1 = MS. Diary in the possession of ceedings, &c. I the Rev. J. C. Keate. 1834—1852. Appointment of Dr. Hawtrey— Educational Reform— Provost Hodgson- Improvement in the Condition of the Collegers— Sanatorium— The ' Christopher '—Restoration of the Chapel— Mathematics— Modern Languages — Swimming. ' R. KEATE was not allowed to close his long administration without hearing some murmurs of discontent at the unsatisfactory system which he had found in force, and which had been retained almost unaltered for so many years. The Edinburgh Review was, perhaps, the first to point out to the public the utter inadequacy of the school- books in use at Eton, and the very imperfect manner in which even those books were taught ; ' and although the sub- ject was dropped for a while, amid the national excitement about Parliamentary Reform, it was taken up with renewed energy in 1834 by a host of pamphleteers.^ Many extra- vagant statements were made on both sides of the ques- tion, but an unprecedentedly rapid decline in the number of boys on the School-list of that year showed pretty plainly that the vindicators of the old system had not been able to ' Vol. Ixi. pp. 65—80. I - Quarterly Review y^ycX. Ixii. pp. I 128—175. 400 EDUCATIONAL REFORM. convince parents that all was as it should be." The main hope for the future in the minds of all who had the real interests of Eton at heart lay in the fact that the senior Assistant, Edward Craven Hawtrey, who was appointed to succeed Keate as Head-Master, was known to be a scholar of liberal views, as well as a refined and courteous gentleman. The correspondent whose remarks on the state of education under Keate were given in the last chapter = continues thus : — " If the affairs of mankind were transacted regularly, as young men often conceive they can be, our school, on the accession of a new ruler in 1834, must needs have altered much more than it did, in conformity with the maxims by that time established in England. Looking merely to what was going on at Cambridge, to the geometry of Whewell, to the algebra of Peacock, to the double studies even then re- quired for the Classical Tripos, to the universal acknowledg- ment of the doctrine that mathematics were indispensable, to the fact that even Eton men studied mathematics at the university ,3 it seems strange that Dr. Hawtrey, who was intimate with real scholars and philosophers, should not at once have made mathematics an integral and necessary part of the school-work. In a less degree it seems strange also that he should not have insisted on Greek and Latin being taught properly in school ; that is to say, taught in a way that would have satisfied a Thirlwall or a Milman. Reform he did ; and it has been deliberately said by one who loved Keate that it was Hawtrey who more than any man left his mark on the School. His reform was important, although he founded neither a complete system of liberal education — adjusting the claims of the modern and of the ancient lore, of the humanities and the severe arts — nor a system of • Dr. Keate found about 500 names on the list when he took office in 1809, and this was the average number for the next four- teen years. Between 1823 and 1833 the number rose from 510 to 627 ; yet in 1 834 it fell to 486. =• Pages 354—358. 3 Stapylton's Eton School Lists show the names of a considerable number of double-hx^t class men. EDUCATIONAL REFORM. 401 pure grammatical instruction that would duly prepare stu- dents for the philology of Oxford and Cambridge. " Very soon after his appointment he wrote to his pre- decessor, submitting to him for critical examination a plan of school organization. Keate approved of it unreservedly, and, with that perfect freedom from egoti.sm which was per- haps not known to the Eton world (for he was miiltis per- vulgatus, paucis notns), made the modest remark that there was much in the plan that he would himself have wished to establish, had he been able. Now the question naturally arises, how could Keate have been unable to do what he thought expedient, unable to do what his successor, a man of weaker will, could effect .'' The answer to this question may be new to many who fancy that they know the School familiarly and intimately. There was a power above and behind the Head-Master — the power of the Provost. This power bent for a time before a new Head-Master. Even so lofty and fine a Provost as Goodall was obliged to abate his majesty for a season. There is in human nature, just as strongly as conservatism and inertia and jealousy are in it, a willingness to let a new broom sweep clean ; unluckily the broom soon ceases to be new. " Hawtrey began his administration by withdrawing from a position which Keate had held with extravagant vigour, the position of sole teacher for the ' upper division ' of the fifth form, besides the twenty boys of the sixth form. He ceased from that occupancy of the great estrade at the end of the Upper School, which implied personal supervision of the four Assistant-Masters teaching from the four smaller desks. From that fortress Keate had stormed at as many as 190 big boys, all supposed to be his listeners, of whom only a few wished, and perhaps still fewer were able, to profit by his sound and spirited teaching ; to that awful presence had been summoned, for fifteen minutes' sharp inspection on every whole-school-day, the many scores of fourth form boys, who were kept from making any very great noise by a sixth form praepostor, while Keate was busy with his division, and the four Assistants were looking over the exercises of the D D 4.02 UPPER SCHOOL. fifth form boys summoned for that purpose from their con- struing lessons in the other class-rooms. Hawtrey used the Head-Master's desk as his tribune for a speech to the whole School or to the whole fifth form ; he used it also as a place from which to set the theme for the Upper Division and sixth form ; but thus far only did he retain that combination Interior of the Upper School. which had given Keate an unwieldy class. He did not go through construing lessons in the Upper School : for them he retired into the adjoining room — the ' library ' — where he found empty book-shelves, the block, and the birch-cup- board. This library he turned into his class-room for all purposes that required decorous silence. " Leaving the sixth form in its old dimensions — ten Col- legers and ten Oppidans — Hawtrey incorporated with it, for most practical purposes, the first six Collegers and the first six Oppidans of the fifth form, thus making up the 'Head- Master's Division ' to thirty-two boys. He then divided the EDUCATIONAL REFORM. 403 rest of the fifth form numerically among the four or five senior Assistants, making no distinction between them in their books ; so that each of these Masters had a class of his own for a whole school-time, and was singly and solely en- trusted with their lessons, both construing and saying by heart, and with their exercises after correction by tutors. This principle of assigning a certain set of boys to one teacher had in Keate's time been applied to the Remove only ; by Hawtrey it was applied to the whole School. In 1833, every fourth form boy sent up for good had to get affixed to the document which was the symbol of that dis- tinction the names of no less than five teachers ; a fifth form boy might have been required to get three. After Hawtrey's change, this number fell to two ; the tutor's approval sanc- tioned the judgment of the division-master. This change did good, for it gave a teacher more control over the boys, and made it simpler for him to send in a report to the Head- Master at the end of every school-time. "All the Assistants under Hawtrey were intended and supposed to work in separate class-rooms, except the fourth form Masters, who continued to use the Upper School. The retirement of the Head-Master from his great desk involved the surrender of an old principle — the superintendence of many teachers by one ; and it was probably part of Haw- trey's deliberate policy ; as it undoubtedly was in keeping with his character, to place an unusual amount of trust in his juniors, or, as he always called them, his 'colleagues.' After ten or twelve years, if not sooner, he perceived that the freedom conceded, whilst it increased zeal, diminished rigour. The severity of drill in the ' rules for the formation of tenses ' was relaxed, and he took alarm ; he made a vehement effort to restore the tyranny of the Eton Greek Grammar, but he could not force back into the old routine a set of young men who had somehow discovered that the formation of tenses could be effected, like the formation of moods, without ' prceponendo' or ' elidendo.' Finding that verbal discipline had been relaxed, he once undertook for six weeks the sole charge of ' library ' — that is to say, the D D 2 404 SCHOLARSHIP AT ETON. drill of fourth form recruits. It was a gallant struggle against what he considered degeneracy, but it was wholly ineffectual as a substitute for that constant personal ex- amination of the boys which Keate had kept up. Human nature prevailed over the old faith. Eton scholars grew up to write Greek correctly, without being able to manufacture a ' paulo-post future ' either from the perfect passive or from the future active ; and in due time even Hawtrey, the last hereditary champion of the Eton formula, acquiesced in the existence at Eton of Masters who could not go through the list of twenty-two kinds of verbs which govern a genitive. That this seemingly modern scholar should have been an earnest believer in the old books, which the real moderns laughed at, was an interesting anomaly ; but it was not altogether good for the School that many of the teachers should without permission let drop a system which they dared not denounce before their ruler's face. It was an awkward and indecorous thing that his young colleagues, who had cast off the Eton yoke and learned true Greek at Cambridge from Shrewsbury men, should be charged with the training of boys by parents who expressly said that they knew Dr. Hawtrey to be an un- sound scholar.' In the teaching of Greek, in a less degree ' In two ways the Head-Master was especially exposed to the criti- cism of the Provost and Fellows. He sent into the College to obtain a half-holiday in a regular week a boy's exercise (Latin or Greekverse) which was expected to be correct, and it was noticed by one Fellow that these exercises ' for play ' were less accurate under Hawtrey than they had been under Keate. He was bound to have eight Latin Declama- tions delivered every year in the pre- sence of the College authorities, copies of which were given to them. These were learnt by heart and re- cited by the third, fourth, fifth, and si.Kth Collegers, but they were for the most part written by Assistant- Masters who had to bring the MSS. to Hawtrey and to submit them to a minute though very courteous in- spection for fear he should be chidden by his superiors for bad Latin. It is a proof, good as far as it goes, of progress in schooling, that these admirable devoirs were in later years performed mainly by the boys, giving less trouble to the Assistants. Declamations justly survived after most of the peculiar exercises and practices became obsolete, but it was generally for- gotten that they constituted a sort of grand-serjeanty due from the Head-Master to the College. EDUCATIONAL REFORM. 40S of Latin also, Eton for many years presented the curious phenomenon of moderate anarchy. Fitful displays of energy on the part of conservative Assistants, such as the intro- duction of a few changes in the old accidence, the binding in one volume of the Eton accidence and the accurate but painful syntax composed by Mr. Wordsworth, of Win- chester ; the printing of one sheet of a new accidence devised by Hawtrey himself, in which he luxuriated in palseographical dissertations on the alphabet ; the engrafting of Dr. Kennedy's elegant syntax on the reformed accidence, and attempts at private manuscript grammars, based on Kiihner, for use at ' private business,' are some of the many signs of discord and confusion which troubled some honest men for a whole generation, and gave Hawtrey a taste of the pains endured by Popes and Primates in ages of transi- tion or reformation. " Meanwhile, in spite of his own precarious tenure of Attic scholarship, and the disloyalty of many of his colleagues to the old Eton traditions, year after year Hawtrey's beloved young men went to the Universities better read and better trained than their predecessors, even if not so well read or well trained as many representatives of less fashionable schools. To put the case broadly, he lived to see (if he had eyes to see it) whole tribes of Eton men seasoned with the accurate philology which he had never himself acquired — men who knew his defects, and were, notwithstanding, in- debted to him, and consciously grateful to him for their better schooling. For although he had not improved the school-books materially, and had only unintentionally relaxed the grammatical discipline, he had made it possible for his Assistants to teach in a leisurely and tranquil manner. He practically added theme-writing to verse-writing as an exercise of some importance ; he greatly improved ' trials ' by the introduction of printed examination papers ; he added new examinations from time to time ; and, above all, he established a standard of attainment and a kernel of industry in that part of the School which before his time was the least satisfactory — the King's Scholars or Collegers. 4o6 ED WARD CRA VEN HA WTRE V. " To state the case in another way, for there are more ways than one of elucidating even so sHght a thing as the history of schooHng, Hawtrey may be said to have done by encouraging what Keate tried to do by threatening. If there is any truth in that melancholy caricature by which Keate is known to most men, if his battle-cry really was ' I'll flog you,' it is no less true, though it is by no means well known, that Hawtrey's characteristic utterance was 'Very well, very good exercise,' said with a gracious emphasis which never lost its charm. Keate's mission was to keep down mannishness and swagger ; Hawtrey delighted to give boys the sweet pride of authorship.' Men have almost grown old who still feel thankful that they once lived with a man who, though quite at home in the most brilliant circles, did, as truly as Lacordaire, 'love young people.' When he was at the height of prosperity, he said publicly ; — ' Living here I cannot feel the sadness of gro\ying old, for this place supplies me with an unfailing succession of young friends.' Other men have been even more kind, more charitable, more tender ; but he had a poetical enthusiasm which burnt through vanities and feeblenesses, and fell in light and warmth on shy boys, on proud and ungainly lads, on homely and ordinary teachers, not less than on brilliant and noble students. " A school cannot be managed by sympathy with boys alone. It must now be shown how Dr. Hawtrey's singular generosity told on the government of Eton. He was better supplied with Assistants than Keate had been, though his field of choice was strictly limited to King's College. But when he had selected a man, there were two ways of dealing with him. One was the way of repression, the other was that of encouragement. Hawtrey adopted the latter. To a ' He founded the English Essay, which at once took rank as a dis- tinction of considerable importance. He used to read over the prize essay in the presence of the author, cor- recting the language a httle. When re-written he had it nicely bound. They were generally long narratives, but there was often literary spirit in them, and the late Henry Fitz- maurice Hallam may be named as one of Hawtrey's young authors. EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY. 407 very young man he was as respectful as to a man of mature age, bearing with those crudities and eccentricities by which young men often estrange themselves from their superiors. Therefore his colleagues worked for him, though not in his own groove, as the Marquess Wellesley's young men had worked for him at Calcutta ; nay, there were some among them who were to him what young warriors had been to King David and to Admiral Nelson. " Besides this universal generosity bearing on all varieties of character, Dr. Hawtrey displayed a special liberality in dealing with that which of all things most shapes the character, religion. He was not a theologian, though he could deliver short sermons that were at once orthodox and eloquent. He could no more fathom the controversies of the age in which men were swayed by Newman or by Arnold, than he could take the measure of the new philo- sophies growing up by the side of the new theologies. Had he been suspicious, narrow-minded, or cold-hearted, he would certainly have quarrelled with three or four of the best of his Assistants in the first ten years of his government. As it was, he became the faithful friend and moderate supporter of several Anglo-Catholic colleagues. Had he set his authority against them, had he even let them be thwarted, more than they were thwarted, by the alarmed Protestantism of Eton College, he would have lost the services of men who could not be replaced. But it must be understood that nothing could be further from his mind than a cool calcu- lation of such results. He obeyed his good heart ; he knew by a heavenly instinct when he had a truly good man at his side ; he was sagacious enough to perceive that certain tastes might lead to Rome, but he was not to be scared by such a danger ; he stuck to his friend, he backed up his colleague, because he knew and cherished goodness. " Such was the man ; not an accurate scholar, though versed in many tongues ; not thoroughly well informed, though he had spent thirty thousand pounds on books ; not able to estimate correctly the intellectual development of younger men, though he corresponded with the leaders of 4o8 EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY. England and France ; not qualified to train school-boys in competition with a Vaughan or a Kennedy possessing the advanced knowledge of a later generation, for he had never even been a University man, only a Kingsman ; not one that could be said to organize well, for from first to last he dealt in make-shift and patchwork ; yet, for all that, a hero among school-masters, for he was beyond his fellows candid, fearless, and bountiful ; passionate in his indignation against cruelty, ardent in admiring all virtue and all show of genius ; so forgiving, that for fifty years he seized every chance of doing kindness to a man who had tormented him at school ; and so ingenuous, that when he had misunderstood a boy's character and then found himself wrong, he suddenly grasped his hand, and owned his error magnanimously. Many men have laughed at his rhetoric, and made themselves a repu- tation for wit by telling stories of his behaviour. Such men have probably never read the second part of Don Quixote. The knight was, after all, a true gentleman of fine mind, and his death was pathetic. Our Head-Master was worthy of a high-souled poetical nation in its best age ; and old men who had been his compeers in society wept at his funeral with younger men who had been only his humble yoke- fellows." Several of Hawtrey's reforms in the educational system of the School were effected during the first six years of his ad- ministration ; but the real regeneration of Eton can scarcely be said to have begun before the death of Dr. Goodall in 1 840,' the very year in which the 400th anniversary of the foundation ought to have been celebrated. The Provost, under whose auspices so many improvements moral and material were made, did not obtain his place without some difficulty. When the vacancy occurred, Lord Melbourne mentioned the Hon. William Herbert (an old Oppidan, and afterwards Dean of Manchester) as specially fitted by his graceful scholarship to preside over the College; but when it was found that, ' March 25, 1840. CHOICE OF A PROVOST. 409 according to the statutes, the Provost must of necessity have been a member of one of the foundations of Henry VI., Mr. Herbert's name was withdrawn, and that of Archdeacon Hodgson substituted. It is strange that the Prime Minister, himself an old Etonian, should not have perceived that Mr. Hodgson was little better qualified than Mr. Herbert, not being either a Doctor or a Bachelor of Divinity. The Fellows on the other hand were not sorry to have an excuse for taking the matter into their own hands, and so obtaining for them- selves electoral rights analogous to those enjoyed by their brethren of King's College. On the very day of Dr. Goodall's death, the Vice-Provost called upon Dr. Keate at his residence in the Cloisters at Windsor, and sounded him informally as to his willingness to accept the Provostship. The ex-Head-Master replied that he was reluctant to go into harness again, and that he could hardly afford to take a place in which an economical style of living was practically impossible. Failing in this quarter, the Vice-Provost next applied to Mr. John Lonsdale, one of the seven other persons who were then statutably eligible, and he received from him an encouraging answer. On the 4th of April, the Marquess Wellesley, who was often consulted about Eton affairs, and who had in fact obtained the Provostship for Dr. Goodall some thirty years previously, wrote to Dr. Keate : — " In my judgment, you are the most proper person to fill that high station, and I have already, in the strongest terms, expressed that opinion to Lord Melbourne, whom I believe to be personally most favourably disposed to you. But I fear that some political considerations, with which I have no concern, may interfere." The Visitor of the College, the Head-Master, and Mr. Hodgson himself, seem alike to have considered Keate the fittest man for the post, and, although the Fellows knew his determination, they thought it right to pay him the com- 4IO CHOICE OF A PROVOST. pliment of offering to elect him. Two of their number accordingly called on him on the 6th of April, and it was not until he had given a formal refusal in writing that they took any further action in the matter. Upon the same day, a letter was received from the Secretary of State, Lord Normanby, stating that the Queen had nominated Mr. Hodgson, but on the following morning the assembled Fellows declared this candidate to be ineligible, and proceeded to elect Mr. Lonsdale. The Provost-elect came to Eton on the 8th, and on the loth three of the Fellows, Messrs. Carter, Bethell, and Briggs, went up to London to be present at his institution by the Bishop of Lincoln. They returned, however, with the unwelcome news that Mr. Lonsdale required yet further time for consideration. Finally, after long hesitation, Mr. Lonsdale declined the proffered honour. According to his son-in-law, he " would rather have been Provost of Eton than Archbishop of Canterbury," and his refusal was prompted partly by a reluctance to cause disappointment to his old friend Hodgson, partly by a fear of embroiling the College with the Court and the Government, and partly, though in a lesser degree, by an unwillingness to sever his own connexion with King's College, London. The Fellows, though very sore at being thus unexpectedly deserted by their champion, after they had fulfilled their part of the agreement, felt that further resistance was useless, especially after the issue of a royal mandate for the admission of Archdeacon Hodgson to the degree of B.D. at Cambridge. Upon the receipt therefore of another formal letter from the Queen, they elected her nominee on the Sth of May, 1840. Mr. Lonsdale was soon afterwards appointed Bishop of Lichfield.' ' MS. Diary in the possession of the Rev. J. C. Keate ; Denison's Memoir of Bishop Lonsdale, p. 34 ; Arnould's Memoir of LordDenntan, vol. ii. pp. 104, 105 ; Report of Public Schools Commission, Eton Evidence, 7877. FRANCIS HODGSON. 411 The new Provost was well known in the political and literary world as the son-in-law of Lord Denman, as the translator of Juvenal into English verse, and as an intimate friend of Lord Byron.' He had been an Assistant Master at Eton for a few months in 1809, since which time he had dropped his connexion with the School, and he had been un- successful in an attempt to obtain a Fellowship. He was therefore much surprised when one morning he received a letter from the Duke of Devonshire hailing him as Provost of Eton. On the next day, or the next but one, came another letter to tell him that difficulties had arisen, and that he was not to be Provost. But the difficulties were surmounted, as we have seen, and, through powerful Whig influence, he became Provost of Eton. He at once resigned his prefer- ments, and gave himself up to his new duties. One of his chief reasons for accepting the Provostship was a wish to do something to better the condition of the Collegers, which, if it had altered at all, had altered for the worse, in the course of centuries during which the English people had steadily been growing more refined in their mode of life. The nominal number of boys on the foundation was 70, and for these four dormitories only were provided. There was accommodation for 52 boys in Long Chamber — a room 172 feet long, 27 wide, and 15 feet 6 inches high — and for the remaining 18 in Lower Chamber, and in Upper and Lower Carter's Chambers, two smaller rooms which took their name from an Usher in the early part of the eighteenth century.^ These rooms contained little besides the wooden bedsteads, 4 feet 6 inches wide, and a series of bureaus. Chairs and tables did not exist except for the privileged few, and the ' There are many notices of 0/ the Rev F. Hodgson. Hodgson in Moore's Life of Lord "^ Until 1834, those scholars who Byron, and Arnould's Memoir of had Uttle studies used to pay \l. is. L^rd Denman, and a separate apiece to the Lower-Master, or biography, by his son, has also Usher, as rent, appeared under the title of Memoir 412 LONG CHAMBER. wind whistled through the gaping casements. Candlesticks were made by folding the cover of a school-book, and cutting a hole in the middle of it to receive the candle.' A college servant was supposed to sweep the rooms daily, to make the beds, and in winter to light the fires : but this was all, and he did not sleep on the premises. In point of fact, the lower boys always had to make the beds of the sixteen seniors, viz. — the ten Collegers in the sixth form, and the six in the ' Liberty,' at the top of the Upper Division ; ^ and also to fetch water for them overnight from the pump in Weston's Yard. They themselves, and members of the fifth form, had no chance of washing in College, for they had neither wash- stands nor basins. A deputation which waited on one of the authorities about the year 1838, with a request that a supply of water might be laid on in College, was dismissed with the rebuff ; " You will be wanting gas and Turkey carpets next ! " The Head-Master and Lower-Master, who in former days had respectively occupied rooms at the western and eastern ends of Long Chamber,^ had long since moved into separate houses, where they could live in comfort with their wives and families. From 9 P.M., when they were locked in, until early school on the following morning, the Collegers were left to do as they pleased, free from any sort of supervision. Of course, the little community had its own rules : — " To each his task Duly prescribed, as academic rank Defined his office ; some, the upper mess, (So named) above the rest pre-eminent, Brought from the neighbouring buttery meat and bread, With foaming cans of beer ; to some 'twas given To tend the nightly fire, and in their gowns (Ne'er meant for such base service) to bring home ' Reminiscences of an Etonian [H. C. Blake], p. 69. " Creasy's Historical Account of Eton College, p. 22. 3 See page 244. LIFE IN COLLEGE. A ponderous load of coals, upon their backs Artistically piled ; some, clerkly wise, Noted on tablets fair with pen and ink The mandates of their lords, by one, who watch'd Outside our prison bars, to be conveyed Into the farthest town, and thence evoke Luxurious freightage of nocturnal cheer." ' 413 Gateway into the School Yard. The gates of the School Yard were never closed at night, and at 9.30 P.M. regularly, a hired messenger came to the window of Lower Chamber, bringing not only suppers from the boys' private rooms in Eton and from the ' Christopher, but also corrected exercises from the tutors. At one time there was a secret subterranean exit into Weston's Yard for ' Moultrie's Dream of Life. 414 LONG CHAMBER. the benefit of those who were too big to get out through the window of Lower Chamber. Sporting dogs, ducks, and other animals were sometimes kept in, and above. Long Chamber. On one occasion a live donkey was taken there for a masquerade." The sixth form had immense powers, and the more limited authority of the fifth form was exercised by the older members of it on the younger, whenever, as was usually the case, there was a scarcity of legitimate fags. New comers went by the name of ' Jews,' and had to submit to a terrible amount of bullying.^ A custom of tossing them in blankets to the line — • "^ Ibis ab excusso, missus ad astra, sago" was given up about the year 1832, in consequence of an accident which nearly proved fatal to the late Rowland Williams ; but it is declared by an old Colleger to have been a very pleasant amusement for the persons tossed.3 If the menial services enforced were incompatible with the position, and unfavourable to the training, of a gentleman, the want of privacy was quite as injurious to the moral feelings. A boy who passed unscathed the ordeal of a Colleger's life must have been gifted in no common degree with purity of mind and strength of will. Without dwelling longer on this painful topic, it should be recorded that in 1834 the writer of a pamphlet entitled The Eton System of Education Vindicated was obliged to admit that, wherever the fame of Eton had spread, the name of Long Chamber was " a proverb and reproach." The food which the College provided was in its way as bad ' The Legacy of an Etonian, p. 1 10 ; Wilkinson's Remmiscences of Eton. ' Report of the Public Schools Commission, Eton Evidence, 1475; 4819, 5839. 3 LJfe of Rowland Williams, vol. i. p. 7 ; Wilkinson's Reminiscences of Eton. LIFE IN COLLEGE. 41S as the accommodation. The dinner in the middle of the day consisted invariably of mutton, potatoes, bread, and beer, with the addition of pudding on Sundays. On Founder's-day the liberality of William IV. supplied the unusual dainty of turkeys. The servants merely brought up the commons into Hall, and set them down on the table.' For those who got the first cuts the mutton was good enough, though dread- fully monotonous, but the younger boys fared badly.^ A fcvv hours later, cold mutton was served up under the name of supper to the few who cared to come. The sixth form and the Liberty supped in Long Chamber in the evening. The College did not provide any breakfast or tea. " In 1834," wrote a critic not untruly, " the inmates of a workhouse or a gaol are better fed and lodged than the scholars of Eton : the clothing supplied by the College is limited to a stuff gown." 3 As a matter of fact, almost every Colleger hired a room in the town, technically 'out of bounds,' and, as such, neither re- cognised nor visited by any Master, wherein to have his breakfast and tea, and to prepare his lessons. This, of course, added to a Colleger's expenses, which could never be reckoned at less than 80/. a year. Boys whose parents could not pay for a private room, are said by an ardent Etonian, himself a Colleger, to have undergone "privations that might have broken down a cabin-boy, and would be thought inhuman if inflicted on a galley-slave." 4 The following short account of a Colleger's life, contributed by an old Etonian, confirms and supplements the foregoing statements : — ' Report of the Public Schools Commission, Eton Evidence, 194, 207, 4766 ; Creasy's Historical Ac- count of Eton College, pp. 22, 23. "^ A leg or a shoulder went for eight, a loin for six, and a neck for four. Until 1 874, three junior Col- legers, styled respectively Upper, Middle, and Lower Servitor, stood in a row at the top of the table to wait on the sixth form. The duty of the Middle Servitor was to hold up the sleeves of each sixth form boy as he cameupin histurntocuthismeat. 3 Quarterly Journal of Educa- tion, vol. viii. p. 279. ■• Creasy's Historical Account of Eton College, p. 24. 4i6 LIFE JN COLLEGE. "In the year 1824, on the nomination of a late Vice- Provost, I was admitted to College, being at that time little more than ten years of age, and having had no previous school training whatever, except about three months at a day-school near London. The Long Chamber was then in its prime — that is to say, it had attained its maximum of age, dirt, squalor, neglect, and desolation. My father was entirely unacquainted with the character and arrangements of the School, and naturally presumed that, with such an introduction as he had procured for me, there was no need for him to make any inquiries as to the treatment which a boy, almost fresh from the nursery, would be likely to receive. After a short examination, which consisted of half-a-dozen questions in Latin, of which a copy had already been furnished to me by my tutor, and a few questions as to my name, age, &c., the Provost, Dr. Goodall, admitted me a Scholar of Eton. I was placed at the bottom of the first form in the Lower School, and was conse- quently considered the ' lag of the school.' I then went home for a time. " The hour having at length come for my return, I was, on the 2nd of September, shipped outside one of Thum- wood's or Moody's coaches from the ' Swan with Two Necks ' to my destination. On arriving at my dame's I was told that I must go into College at once, and that I should find my sheets and bedding in Long Chamber, and that as ' lag of the school ' my bedstead was at the bottom. On entering that renowned dormitory, a scene of indescribable confusion greeted me. It was nearly dark, and there were no lights except a few tallow candles carried about here and there by the boys. The floor was covered with the bedding, each bundle being wrapped in a coarse horse-rug, far inferior to what would now be used in a gentleman's stable. This was intended to serve as a counterpane. The noise and hooting of nearly fifty boys, each trying to identify his scanty stock of bedding, combined with the shouts of the elder boys LIFE IN COLLEGE. 417 calling their fags, gave me a foretaste of my future lot. There were no servants, nor was there any one to give us assistance. At 8 P.M., after prayers in the Lower School, the doors were closed and we were left prisoners for the night, to settle down as best we could. At 7 A.M., Dr. Keate's servant set us free, and after pacing the Long Chamber twice, armed with a lantern in winter, left us to our morning duties. A person styled a ' bed-maker ' came to put the clothes straight, but he did little more, and at nightfall we had to make the beds of our fag-masters as well as our own. A tallow candle was allowed to each boy, and this had to be fetched from a dame's house. " I was appointed fag to a member of the sixth form, and I had inter alia to count his linen, to make lists for the laundress, and to fetch water for his basin from the out-door pump. When I wished to obtain water for my own use, I was told that the sixth form and the Liberty only had this privilege in College, and that any ablutions of mine must take place at my dame's. On arriving there I found a room of the barest description, with a sanded floor, called 'the Collegers' room,' which was set apart for such of us as required it. In this room I had my breakfast, which con- sisted of a couple of rolls, some butter, and a cup of milk. There was no table-cloth,, neither was there any servant to attend to me, though I believe I was entitled to some attention from my dame's servant. Most Collegers had rooms of their own in the town, for which they paid separ- ately. My parents were not aware of the custom, and consequently I had no such room. " The condition of a junior Colleger's life at that period was very hard indeed. The practice of fagging had become an organised system of brutality and cruelty. I was frequently kept up until one or two o'clock in the morning waiting on my masters at supper, and undergoing every sort of bullying at their hands. I have been beaten on my palms with the back of a brush, or struck on both sides of my face, because I had not closed the shutter near my master's bed tight enough, or because in making his bed I E E 41 8 LIFE IN COLLEGE. had left the seam of the lower sheet uppermost. When 1 was kept up fagging late at night, I had to look forward to the probability of a flogging on the next day for not knowing my lessons. I say nothing of the minor dis- comforts of having the tassel of one's nightcap set on fire in the night, or of having one's bed turned up on end and finding one's heels in the air. Notwithstanding the frequent obstacles to study, my tutor, who had himself been a Colleger, would listen to no excuses, and Dr. Keate was always ready with the birch on complaint of idleness. The rioting, masquerading, and drinking that took place in College after the doors were closed at night can scarcely be credited. I do not think that there was even an alarm-bell, although I have seen many a blaze that seemed to threaten destruction to the whole building. In winter, the Collegers assembled at dusk and remained in their chambers until after the Latin prayers, which were said in the Lower School. During the intermediate hours, the doors into the School Yard and into Weston's Yard, were open, and a boy shrouded in a blanket stood at the entrance to give timely notice of the Head-Master's approach, so that the boys might open their bureaus, light their candles, and put on an appearance of severe study. Having called over the names and taken a list of any absentees. Dr. Keate would return to his house as if nothing could go wrong later in the night. " In Hall there was mutton for dinner daily. The boys helped themselves in rotation, and my share, when I was at the bottom of the school, was the last cut of the invariable shoulder. By the time the joint reached me there was little left but bone, and my dinner generally consisted of the excellent hot new bread, of which there was an abundant supply. I used to put some of it in the pocket of my gown and eat it in the Playing Fields. Most of the bread supplied was wasted, as the elder boys used to pelt each other with it directly after dinner, leaving very little for the alms- women, who were allowed by the College all the meat and bread that remained over." OLD ABUSES. 419 The Fellows might speciously urge that the boys were treated as ordered in the statutes, and that Henry VI. did not expect the Collegers to be taken from the upper classes of society. These apologists of old abuses had to adopt a different line of argument if pressed as to their own position and emoluments. Then they would catch at slight ex- pressions in the statutes, and plead that all inconvenient provisions were obsolete. No candid person, however, could fail to see that the rulers of the College had, for many gene- rations, enriched themselves at the expense of those whose interests it was their duty to protect. The breach of the statutes in the case of the Head-Master was the most glaring of all. Henry VI. had ordered that he should be a celibate, using one room as sitting-room and bedroom, that he should receive from the College only 16/. a year besides commons and small allowances, and that he should give gratuitous instruction not only to the Collegers but also to the Commensals, or Oppidans. In the first part of the nineteenth century, we find the Head-Master married, living in a luxurious private house, and enjoying an income equal to that of many a bishop, derived in part from the ill-used Collegers. To have suggested any change to Dr. Goodall would have been worse than useless, although even in his day there were some Fellows who desired that justice should be done ; it is remembered that in a speech on Founder's Day Mr. Bethell once said in a perfectly modest way : — " I have always stood up for the statutable rights of the Scholars." ' Mr. Hodgson brass." A second example of his acumen is given by a reviewer in the Pall Mall Gazette (May 19, 1876) : — " When a boy in school ' Bethell was, as a Fellow, con- sistently in favour of salutary re- forms, but he had not been efficient as a Master. He was once known to have interrupted a construing lesson by making a critical remark — " Pastes ceratos, ' brazen gates.' Yes ; that is right ; probably so called because they were made of construed ' duplice ficu ' ' with a double fig,' the Master interposed, ' Right, quite right ; a kind of fig that was double.' " E E 2 420 NEW BUILDINGS. was no sooner Provost than he began to take measures for bettering their condition. His son records that " as the carriage which conveyed him from Derbyshire passed, on the third evening of its journey, through the Eton Playing Fields into Weston's Yard, and the College buildings came into sight, the Provost exclaimed with characteristic earnestness : — " Please God, I will do something for those poor boys." ' The disgrace of Long Chamber was already making itself felt, and on a visit of the King of Prussia in January 1842, his request to be allowed to inspect the sleeping arrangements of the boys was refused, on the plea that that portion of the College was never shown to strangers. Previously, visitors of all degrees had been free to see Long Chamber. The first improvement was in the fare, beef being introduced twice a week. Then the hour for supper was postponed to 8 P.M., and the character of the meal altered. A fund was soon afterwards started for increasing the accommodation, by building a new wing on the site of the stables in Weston's Yard. Lord Lyttelton became chairman of a committee of which Mr. J. L. Dampier was the most active member. In 1844, the subscriptions amounted to nearly 14,000/.,'' and on the 20th of June in that year Prince Albert laid the foundation-stone. Separate rooms were provided for the first forty-nine Collegers, while the remaining twenty-one were left to occupy one-half of the old Long Chamber. ' Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodg- son, vol. ii. p. 261. "^ Among others Her Majesty- gave 500/., the Queen Dowager, 100/., Prince Albert, 100/., Eton College, 2,000/., the members of Eton College, 2,100/., King^s Col- lege, 500/., the Duke of Northum- berland, 1,200/., Mr. Hallam, 200/., Sir J. T. Coleridge, 100/., Mr. Glad- stone, 50/, Lord Melbourne, 100/., Bishop Sumner, 200/., Dr. Keate, 100/., and the Duke of Biiccleuch, 200/. The Marquess Wellesley's promised donation of 200/. was lost by his death. Dr. Hawtrey handed over to the fund year after year the whole sum which he received from the Collegers, who at this time were obliged to pay 6/. a year to the Head-Master, in direct violation of the statutes. In 1841, the amount was i8g/., in 1844, 317/., the number of Collegers having in- creased in consequence of the improvement in their position. K.N IKANLE TO WliSTUW's YARD. REFORMS IN COLLEGE. 421 The new wing was completed in 1846. A proper staff of servants was engaged to do all the menial work under the eye of a matron ; the building was warmed and supplied with water ; and other conveniences, such as studies, lavatories, and a sick-room, were added. Breakfast and tea, like that of the Oppidans, was furnished to the Collegers, who from thenceforth ceased to hire rooms in the town, and to pay the dames for the right of being received into their houses when ill. More important still was the decision that a Master should sleep under the same roof as the Collegers, and maintain discipline among them. In the ordinary course of things an appointment of the kind, worth about 200/. a year, might have been given to some young Master little accustomed to deal with boys. Everyone therefore honoured the noble self- sacrifice of Mr. C. J. Abraham, in giving up his overflowing boarding-house to take the novel position of ' Assistant- Master in College.' To his personal influence must in great measure be ascribed the immense change in the moral tone of the King's Scholars. Without intruding on any one, he walked about of an evening, and made the boys his friends ; and, without the display of any peremptory authority, he helped to modify materially the system of fagging. Hitherto the number of Collegers had always been short of seventy. They were admitted practically by nomination, for the entrance examinations to Eton, as well as to King's, were little more than a form. No thoughtful parent of moderate means would allow his son to encounter the rough treatment to which a lower boy was subjected in Long Chamber, and boys who wished eventually to secure the rich prize of a .scholarship at King's used to postpone the assumption of the cloth gown until a few days before their attainment of the maximum age allowed by the Statutes. Consequently almost all the Collegers were members either of the sixth or the fifth form, and in some years there were not more than forty 422 ELECTION-TIDE. altogether on the list. At the election of 1 841, when some thirty-five places were vacant, there were only two candidates, one of whom, C. H. Branwell, came up without the necessary certificate of baptism, and was unable to declare that he had ever been baptised. Provost Hodgson at once took him into the Election Hall, sent for a basin of water, and there and then administered the sacrament, the two 'posers' standing as godfathers. As soon as the scheme of improvements was made public, the number of Collegers began to increase rapidly, and in one year there were sixty candidates for a few vacancies. With the division of Long Chamber disappeared not only the crying evils of physical discomfort and moral disorder, but also many customs interesting to the antiquary. The intro- duction of servants abrogated much of the elaborate code of unwritten law, which fixed the relations of master and fag, and the boys were relieved from the crushing weight of a traditional discipline, most hurtful to individual development. As long as it continued intact. Long Chamber was furbished up annually during the week before Election Saturday. Rugs were stripped from the beds of lower boys, and with a bolster or two were folded into a kind of sledge seat for an upper boy, who was dragged swiftly up and down by a team of others yoked to a rope. This peculiar process known as "rug-riding" was adopted in order to polish the oak floor, which at other times was begrimed with dirt. The green rugs given by the Duke of Cumberland were then produced and spread on the beds, and boughs of beech, brought from Hedgerley and Burnham, were fastened round the windows, fireplaces, and beds. Lower School too was decorated with boughs — a custom dating at least from the time when this was the only schoolroom.' The seats of the Masters were made into bowers, ' Reminiscences of an Etonian [H. C. Blake], pp. 112, 113; The Legacy of an Etonian, p. 105. ' Rugging ' was a term used in College as equivalent to lying in bed on the morning of a holiday. THE BOYS' LIBRARY. 423 popularity and its reverse being respectively marked by leafy boughs and dry sticks. A small room opening out of Long Chamber and supposed to be the Captain's study, was also cleaned up at election-tide and its empty shelves furnished with calf-bound books borrowed by the Captain from his Oppidan friends. Of course much of this was a miserable imposture, intended to conceal from strangers the real squalor and wretchedness of Long Chamber. The Collegers were not the only boys who benefited by the erection of the New Buildings, for a spacious library was built in the tower, for the use of Collegers and Oppidans alike. Some books presented to the School by Dr. Rosewell in the seventeenth century were brought out from the cupboard in which they had lain ever since their removal from the Library at the end of Upper School. To these were added the Delphin edition of the Classics, presented by George IV. — " the useless gift of a royal rake " — and the books belonging to the collection founded by W. M. Praed. Private persons came forward with donations of books, especially Dr. Hawtrey. Dr. Thackeray, Provost of King's, gave some cases of stuffed birds, and other donors added artistic and interesting objects, making the room a kind of museum. A heraldic window was put up Dr. Hawtrey and Dr. Okes. The Boys' Library in Weston's Yard, open to, and supported by a compulsory payment from, all in and above Middle Division, has been justly praised as " the sanctuary of learning, and the refuge of quiet to many a boy for whom a public school would else afford small opportunity of satisfying a desire for knowledge beyond the mere routine of school life." ' Another great improvement was the foundation of a Sanatorium at a little distance from the College, on the Eton Wick Road, in which accommodation was provided for twenty-four cases of infectious illness. It is strange that this building, which cost 6,000/., was not erected by the College, ' Coleridge's Memoir of W. M. Praed, vol. i. p. xxv. 421- MATERIAL IMPROVEMENTS. and was placed on land not even belonging to the College. The Head-Master made himself responsible to the builder for interest at 5 per cent, on the cost of the work, and money has since been raised by a yearly charge on every Oppidan of i/. 4J. towards paying off the whole debt, and acquiring the property for the School.' The general health at Eton was greatly improved in 1846 by the adoption of an excellent system of drainage, at a cost of little less than 4,000/. A constant stream of water was made to run through a large new sewer into the great sewer built by Henry VL, and thence into the Thames, which flows at the rate of about three miles an hour.^ A new outlet was also provided for the pond under Baldwin's Bridge. " Barne's-Pool, seduced by classic dreams. Courts Thames with subterranean streams ; Forcing, Alpheus-like, its way. To screen its loves from eye of day." 3 By exchange with the Crown, the College became pos- sessed of some dirty tenements in Eton which were forthwith pulled down, and replaced by substantial houses for Masters. Among the houses thus acquired was the old 'Christopher' Inn, situated opposite to the Churchyard, in the midst of the boarding-houses.'t Etonians of the present day can hardly realise the former importance of this establishment. " To the Christopher came many times a day coaches and post-chaises from all parts of the compass ; on Fridays, which were market days in Eton, the farmers held their ordinary there ; and squires, drovers, pedlars, recruiting sergeants, and occasional village wenches who came in to be hired as servants, clustered under the porch. . . Boys were always slinking into the Inn for drink. If caught, they had been to see friends from London, or to inquire about parcels " Report of the Public Schools Commission, Eton Evidence, 1450 — 1474,4780-4/90. - Ibid. 227 — 229. 3 Eton Bureau, p. 7. •• See the cut on page 283. THE 'CHRISTOPHER.' 42 S sent down by coach. Masters shrank from provoking these ready Ues, and a great deal had to be winked at."' The evils connected with the ' Christopher ' were in no way mitigated by the change of ownership, and Dr. Hawtrey urged upon the College that the lease should not be renewed. His request was refused on the score of the loss of income which would ensue if it were acted upon, for the landlord paid well. Before making a second crusade against the ' Christopher,' Hawtrey resolved to ascertain the opinion of the Assistant-Masters on the subject, and accordingly summoned them to discuss it in ' Chambers.' Most of them took his view, but a few argued that it was desirable to keep some temptation ever before the boys, as a means of bracing their moral nature. At last one of the youngest of the number, a man of considerable energy, was heard to say : — " Oh, the Devil will do that for you without your help." Thus fortified the Head-Master wrote to the Provost : — " I should be guilty of a grave Dereliction of Duty, if I did not again in the most earnest Manner call the Attention of the College now assembled to the great Evil of the Christopher Inn ; and I should be more to blame because my own Opinion has now the almost unanimous Support of all who are united with me in the Government of the School. There was a Time when there were no good Inns in the Vicinity of the School at which the Parents and Friends of Boys could be received ; when the Houses of the Masters were small and inconvenient ; when a Room was actually retained at the Christopher for the weekly Meetings (I believe I may add more than weekly Meetings) of the Assistants." Hawtrey then proceeded to show how all this was changed. The opening of the railway had enabled parents to visit their sons and return to town on the same day ; the inns at Windsor had become better ; and few people stayed at the ' Christopher ' ' Seven Years at Eton, (4th ed.) pp. 394, 395. 426 THE 'CHRISTOPkER! except riotous parties of undergraduates, who exercised a most demoralising influence on the School. Nine-tenths of the profits of the innkeeper were derived from Eton boys, who were in the habit of going there directly after dinner, and also of an evening on their way home from their tutors. In connexion with this last point Hawtrey wrote : — " I have long complained and long borne with this Evil. Every Vigilance is exercised to check it, but it is too much for me. It is really the only Mischief for which there is but one Remedy. The Remedy rests with yourself and the Fellows. " I do therefore most earnestly appeal to you in the Name of those who are laboriously occupied with myself in pre- serving as well as we can the Discipline of the School, in the Name of several hundred Parents who have strongly expressed to me the same Opinions to which I have now given Words, in the Name of more than the usual Number of Boys, who will heartily thank you in After- Life for thus consulting their best Interests not to retain in the centre of us a source of undeniable Evil without any countervailing Good. Your Opinion, I know, wholly coincides with mine. .... I have not hitherto proposed any Change, which, when consented to, has been found to fail Every Year's increasing experience has convinced me that this Change is more and more called for, and that the Delay will each succeeding Year be more pernicious to the School : a Site for a new Chapel of Ease is sought for, and the Building of so great an addition to the Spiritual Comfort of the Town is delayed while the Site is still to be found. Why not displace for a holier Purpose a notorious School of Self-indulgence and Intemperance ? . . . . Here is a glorious opportunity of turning unmixed Evil into unmixed Good My heart is deeply interested in what I have written, and I could not leave one Stone unturned to gain so great an Advantage to the School." ' ' MS. Correspondence of Provost Hodgson. December i, 1845. MA TERIAL IMPRO VEMENTS. 427 This letter sealed the fate of the ' Christopher,' the landlord received notice to quit, the time-honoured sign-board was taken down, and the greater part of the house was let to one of the Masters. Little now remains to show the original purpose of the building save the balustraded galleries on two sides of the court-yard, and the stables at the end of it. The Long Walk. During Hodgson's tenure of the Provostship, the dreary appearance of the interior of Upper School was greatly relieved by the addition of a series of marble busts of eminent Etonians, some of them presented by the individuals themselves, some by their descendants or admirers. The Marquess Wellesley gave his own bust to the College in 1840, 428 THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. and his example was followed by his illustrious brother shortly afterwards.' About the same time, a picturesque lodge designed by Shaw was put up at the end of the Long Walk for the use of the Head-Master's servant, who had hitherto occupied one of the rooms under the Upper School. Amid all these changes, the most prominent building at Eton was not neglected. The great religious revival which emanated from Oxford in 1833 had given an impulse to church-building and church-restoration unprecedented since the fifteenth century, and many old Etonians had turned their attention to Gothic architecture as a subject worthy of study. The first complaint of the unsightly condition of the interior of the Collegiate Church came from one of the most eminent members of the High Church party. Sir J. T. Coleridge, in a letter written to Provost Hodgson in September, 1840. The main object of the letter was to recommend that the whole School should in future be summoned to a daily service at 7 or 7.30 A.M. in lieu of the services hitherto held on such holidays and half-holidays as were not marked as holydays or the eves of holydays in the Church Calendar ; but he also took the opportunity of denouncing the internal fittings of the building as wasteful of space, ugly, and in every way objectionable.^ It must be remembered that in those days the sixth form and the young noblemen, or ' nobs ' as they were called, used to occupy an upper row of seats ranged along the walls f that there was a great box near the east end ' The other busts of Etonians, put up from time to time, are those of Bishop Pearson, Dr. Hammond, Lord Camden, Lord Chatham, Lord North (all by Behnes), Lord Grey (by Campbell), Lord Grenville (by Nollekens), Walpole, Fielding, Gray, Porson, Fox, Lord Howe, Lord Denman, and Hallam. At the south end are busts of George in. (by Wood), William IV. (by Chantrey), and of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. "^ MS. Correspondence of Proyost Hodgson. 3 It was the custom for each new occupant of the upper stalls to celebrate his admission to them, by distributing among his neigh- bours small packets of almonds and raisins which were eaten in church. These must not be confounded with RESTORATION. 429 for the male servants of the College, and another for the female servants ; that many of the parishioners sat in the choir ; and that all the old stonework up to a considerable height was hidden by wooden panelling. The process by which the interior underwent a complete transformation was gradual. The first improvement was simple enough, and consisted in removing the pompous reredos which concealed the east end. A new altar, altar- rails, and pulpit, of carved stone, and Gothic in design, were next provided. In 1844, a subscription was set on foot among the boys for the purpose of substituting stained glass for the plain quarries in the great east window, and the work was entrusted to Wille- ment, the leading man of his profession. Different portions of it were executed and put up as the money came in, but the whole was not completed until 1849. ^t was considered the greatest work of the kind that had been executed for many genera- tions, and it was certainly very costly. Unfortunately the art of painting on glass had been but lately revived, and the general effect of the window is most unsatisfactory. The gigantic figures of the twelve Apostles in the side-lights are heavy, and out of character with the building, while the subjects of the Crucifixion and Ascension which occupy the three central lights are theatrical in treatment and garish in colour. The easternmost windows on either side of the choir were treated by Willement in a similar style, that on the north side being paid for by the Assistant-Masters, and that on the south side by Mr. W. A. Carter.' While these windows were in course of execution, it was resolved to restore the interior of the Church in accordance with the style of architecture which prevailed in England in the similar packets distributed dur- ing 5 o'clock school, among the members of the Sixth Form, by every new member of it. ' Each of these windows cost no less than 800/., the east window over 2,000/. 43° THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH. the fifteenth century. For this purpose a Hmited nun:iber of architects were invited to send in designs, the competitors being Messrs. Buckler, Butterfield, Elmslie, Derrick, and Deeson, and of these the last named was chosen by the unanimous vote of the judges, Messrs. Shaw, Ferrey, and Nes- field.' For some time there was an idea of vaulting the whole building with stone, as probably contemplated by Henry VI. Some of the authorities, however, took alarm, and expressed their conviction that the weight of such a roof would imperil the safety of the whole structure, forgetful, or more likely un- aware, of the fact that the buttresses of the Collegiate Church of Eton are the most massive in England, except those of the sister College at Cambridge. The idea was accordingly given up, and nothing was done to the roof beyond removing the paint and plaster, and adding some flimsy cusping to the old woodwork. The pretentious ' classical ' organ-loft which had hitherto blocked up the west window of the choir was pulled down, and Mr. E. Coleridge at once undertook to have the window filled with stained glass. A proposal to place the organ in Lupton's Chapel was happily negatived," and a new organ, purchased at a cost of 800 guineas, was, after some experiments, placed half-way up the choir on the south side. When all the old panelling and seats were cleared away in 1 847, it was discovered that the walls of the five western bays of the church on both sides were covered with mediaeval paintings.3 Some of them had been defaced by memorial tablets affixed in the seventeenth century, and others by the erection of a staircase leading to the organ-loft, but enough remained to render the discovery the most important of the kind that had been made in England during the present century.4 Unfortunately the number of persons who appre- ' The Builder, June 7 and July 26, 1845. = The Builder, October 4, 1845. ^ See pages 83-go, and 157-158, above. ■t Gentlemari s Magazine, series, vol. xxviii. pp. 187, 188 Interior or thl Chapel. MURAL PAINTINGS. 431 ciated the merit of the paintings was small, and when it had been ascertained that the subjects were derived from super- stitious legends, so little attention was paid to them, that the clerk of the works took it for granted that they were to be obliterated, and gave orders to that effect. Mr. Wilder, one of the Fellows, came in while the work of destruction was going on, and immediately put a stop to it, but not before the upper row of figures had almost entirely disappeared. The Provost declared himself quite willing that the remainder should be preserved as historical curiosities, for the benefit of a future generation, but, considering them unfit to be seen in a building dedicated to the use of the Church of England, he insisted that they should once more be covered over Prince Albert, whose Protestanism was quite as unim- peachable as Hodgson's, entreated in vain that by some mechanical contrivance, such as hinges or sliding panels, it might still be possible for lovers of art to examine the paintings at will, without any danger to the religious principles of the ordinary congregation. A suggestion of transferring the paintings from the walls to canvas, proved impracticable on account of the great cost it would have entailed. Now we can judge of these paintings only from two or three sets of drawings which were made while the wood-work which conceals them ^\•as in course of construction. Twenty oak stalls \\'ith carved canopies were erected on the old site, many of them being given to the Church as memorials of Etonians, living and deceased, and bearing their names and coats of arms on brass tablets. The whole choir was fitted up with oak seats ; an altar, altar-rail, and pulpit of the same material being also substituted for the comparatively new works in stone, which had been universally condemned as heavy and cold in appearance. The pulpit was tried first in one place, and then in another, and was finally fixed near the door leading into the northern vestibule. The old brass lectern, after being taken into use for a time, was again 432 MATERIAL IMPROVEMENTS. relegated to the 'ante-chapel.' Stone flags were laid all over the floor of the Church, in place of the checked pave- ment of black and white marble, except within the altar- rails, where tiles of special design were used. Mr. Hodgson in his intense dread of Romanism refused his consent to a scheme for decorating the east end elaborately, and would only allow the Ten Commandments arid the Beatitudes to be painted there, in a style befitting the walls of a village school. The ' ante-chapel ' was the last part of the building that was taken in hand, in 1852. Of course all this could not be done out of the ordinary income of the College, and a sub- scription was raised, to which Mr. Wilder, one of the Fellows, contributed the munificent sum of 5,000/. A new font was given in 1850 by the Collegers, as a tribute of regard for Mr. C. J. Abraham, who had done so much for them. While the Church was undergoing restoration, the boys attended service in a temporary building erected for the purpose in a field near Barne's Pool. In 1846, a new cemetery, with a neat chapel, was opened on the Eton Wick Road. Such were the material improvements carried out at Eton between 1840 and 1852. Many alterations in the studies and discipline of the School were made during the same time. Dr. Hawtrey had, as we have already seen, induced Dr. Goodall to allow some important reforms in these respects, but more remained to be done. The pleasure with which he had hailed the appointment of Mr. Hodgson in 1840 was therefore enhanced by his receipt of a letter from the Provost suggesting certain administrative changes. He at once replied : " I am delighted to find that in almost every Point which your Letter touches upon we entirely agree. In many I have already anticipated your Views ; in some I have been restrained as yet from doing so only by the Veto of superior authority Whatever be done, I know we have the same object ; and I have no doubt of our ETON AND KING'S. 433 discussing these deeply interesting Matters in a Spirit which will lead to co-operative Reform." ' The friendly relations between Hodgson and Hawtrey con- tinued undisturbed until the death of the former, although questions arose from time to time on which there was a differ- ence of opinion between them. Sometimes, as in the case of the abolition of ' Montem ' and of ' bounds,' the Provost was more zealous for reform than the Head-Master ; at other times, like a good constitutional King, he gave his indispensable assent to measures which he would not himself have proposed. On one point only is Mr. Hodgson known to have stood in the way of a real reform, and that was with regard to the appointment of Assistant-Masters. It had for a long time been customary for all the Masters to be Kingsmen. The evils of this system have been thus pointed out by Sir John T. Coleridge : — " Boys were nominated to college in the first instance by the electors, in the exercise of simple patronage ; and when elected, they maintained their places and order of succession through the School without any consideration of relative, or even of absolute merit, ability, or application. They suc- ceeded to King's College in the same way, the electors on both occasions going through the solemn farce of a free election, and having been sworn to an honest, impartial, and strict performance of their duty as electors. When the lads were thus floated to King's, they came to a college locally in the University, but scarcely of it in any true sense. It had no independent members ; its undergraduates took no part in the exercises or examinations of the University; very few of its honours were open to them ; they mixed very little with the members of other colleges ; and in their own, they only found their old, and generally speaking un- improved school-fellows living under the laxest discipline. From young men sometimes only in their third year, and thus unpromisingly trained, the Head and Lower Master of ■ Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson, vol. ii. p. 262. F F 43+ ASSISTANT MASTERS. Eton, with whom the selection practically rests, each for his own School, exclusively appointed their Assistants."' ' Another writer justly describes the system as a " circulus vitiosus." " Since the failure of an attempt, in the days of Dr. Heath, to secure a situation as Assistant-Ma.ster for an old Oppidan — Henry Vincent Bayley — only two Masters had been appointed who were not Kingsmen, and both of them had been Collegers. Hawtrey wished to go further than this, and with some difficulty obtained Hodgson's permission to engage as Assistant-Masters two old Etonians who had not been educated on the foundation of either of the Colleges of Henry VI. Both the young men in question had taken the highest honours at Oxford ; one of them has since made his mark on the literature of the Victorian age ; the other is now an eminent member of the Society of Jesus ; so that Hawtrey's favourable opinion of their abilities was not un- warranted. Mr. Goldwin Smith and Mr. Henry Coleridge would have been for a time at least secured for Eton, for they both accepted the invitation, if the Provost had not withdrawn his sanction at the last moment, falling back on his old argument that the places of the Masters at Eton formed part of t\\Q peculium of the Kingsmen. In this view he was warmly supported by several of the Fellows, one of whom wrote to say that the appointment of an Oppidan as Master would, if allowed, prove to be the first step towards the ad- mission .of Oppidans to the new buildings in Weston's Yard.3 Although it is impossible to endorse Hodgson's opinion in this matter, it is equally impossible to doubt his integrity of purpose. With him aJl personal considerations were lost in the earnest desire to promote the welfare of Eton. No Provost has ever more thoroughly realised the duties and responsibilities attaching to his high office, and the manifold " Lecture delivered at the Athen- aum, i860. " Edinburgh Review, vol. li. p. 67. 3 MS. Correspondence of Provost Hodgson. EXAMINA TIONS. 435 improvements in the condition of school and town aHke effected during his administration testify abundantly to his energy and prudence. By his tact and courtesy he conciliated all who came in contact with him, and even those who were most opposed to him on public questions could not but acknowledge his exceeding gentleness and goodness of heart. In 1 841, the Provost gladly accepted Prince Albert's noble offer of founding annual prizes for modern languages, open to the whole School, an offer doubtless due in part to the suggestion of Dr. Hawtrey, who was as conversant with French, German, and Italian, as with Latin and Greek. Permanent evidence of Dr. Hawtrey's refined tastes may be found in his privately-printed book, // Trifoglio, and those who were under him at Eton remember his readiness in illus- trating passages in the ordinary school-books by quotations from modern writers of other countries. In this respect the contrast between him and his predecessor was very striking. Keate's system of teaching was calculated to promote accurate scholarship, Hawtrey's to promote mental culture. Nevertheless, scholarship, in the stricter sense of the word, was not neglected under Hawtrey, and measures were taken to raise the standard of proficiency among the Collegers. Hitherto the entrance examination for the foundation had been an empty form, every candidate knowing beforehand the exact passages which he would be called upon to translate. There was but one instance of a break-down, and it was that of a boy who proved unable to decline the word bonus.^ Under Hodgson and Hawtrey, the examination was made a reality. The admission moreover was no longer allowed to depend on mere seniority, and, as a further safeguard against idleness, an ' intermediate examination ' was made compulsory on all Collegers in their seventeenth year." " Report of Public Schools Com- mission, Eton Evidence, 1228— 1241, 8889—889^, 8972. " Ibid. 8897—8898, 8965—8970, 8654 — 8692. F F 2 436 MA THE MA TICS. An important step in the direction of educational reform which affected the whole School was taken in 1839 or 1840. To quote the word.s of the Royal Commissioners : — "Before the year 1836 there appears to have been no mathematical teaching of any kind at Eton. There was a titular teacher of writing, arithmetic, and mathematics, who had been originally styled teacher of writing and arithmetic only. ' I have heard it reported,' says Mr. S. Hawtrey, ' that he went away for a little while, and came back as mathe- matical master.' He does not appear, however, after this accession of dignity, to have taught, or been competent to teach, anything but writing and arithmetic, and he was an old man when Mr. Hawtrey came to Eton. Mr. Hawtrey, who had lately graduated as eleventh wrangler at Cambridge, received permission to give mathematical instruction as an extra to those boys whose parents wished them to learn ; but ' in order not to trench on the interests of Mr. Hexter,' the only boys permitted to learn of Mr. Hawtrey were those in the Head Master's division, which contained about 30, or any others who had obtained a certificate from Mr. Hexter that they had attended his class and were competent to attend Mr. Hawtrey's. . . . This arrangement did not prove satisfactory, . . and after about three years Mr. Hawtrey was allowed by the authorities of the College to disem- barrass himself and the school of Mr. Hexter, by under- taking to pay him a pension of 200/. a year." Mr. Stephen Hawtrey thus became free to take mathe- matical pupils from any part of the School, and obtained a position analogous to that of the Drawing-Master and the Fencing-Master. He built a Mathematical School at con- siderable expense on a piece of ground on the road to South Meadow, leased to him by the College, and by degrees he engaged several Assistants. " In 185 1 mathematics were for the first time incorporated into the regular work of the School, and Mr. Hawtrey was EDUCATIONAL REFOR.U. 437 made Mathematical Assistant Master, which placed him on the same level as the Classical Assistants. His own Assist- ants, however, did not share his elevation ; they became, or remained, only ' Assistants in the Mathematical School ' ; . . . they had not a share, as every Assistant Master has, in the right and duty of maintaining discipline out of school ; they were not allowed to wear the academical dress, and could not send in complaints to the Head Master, unless previously signed by Mr. Hawtrcy." » The restriction on the use of caps and gowns was removed soon after the death of Provost Hodgson, but in other respects this anomalous state of things continued unaltered for many years. A mathematical prize consisting of books to the value of 30/. was instituted in 1846 by Col. George Tomline, who conveyed 1000/. to the College in trust for this purpose. When mathematics were made compulsory, it was arranged that, in regular weeks, Tuesday should be a half-holiday instead of a holiday as heretofore. A few years before this, a rule had been made that those sons of noblemen who brought pri\'ate tutors with them to Eton, should not thereby be ex- empted from the necessity of frequenting the pupil-room of some Assistant-Master, at the same hours and under the same conditions as their schoolfellows. Dr. E. C. Hawtrey had, while still an Assistant-Master, done something to improve the manner in which geography was taught in the lower part of the School, but he did not prosecute his reforms in this direction after his promotion to the Head-Mastership. The rule that ever}' boy in the Remove should once a week draw, or fill up, a map of part of the ancient world, was at least as old as the middle of the eight- eenth centur}', and good enough in theory, but in practice it was absurd.' Boys who did not know the localit\- of St. • Report of tJu Public Schools | ' Boys were free to decorate the Commisswti, vol. i. p. 81. I margins of their maps with flags. 438 FLOGGING. Petersburg or Washington, were expected to give the names of modern villages occupying the sites of towns of the classical world, and, week after week, Hawtrey flogged boys for not knowing such places as Ramadan Oglu or Kissovo.' Never- theless there was less flogging altogether under Hawtrey than there had been under Keate. It is indeed recorded that on one occasion Hawtrey flogged all the boarders at a dame's house, a feat which might seem to rival his predecessor's performance on a whole division of the School, but on closer enquiry it appears that the house held only twelve boys. Their offence was a boating expe- dition in summer before early school ; but this would have been forgiven by their dame, Mrs. Rishton, if they had not invaded the privacy of her sitting-room, in order to make their exit through the unbarred window. On the morning of the 13th of May 1836, the day after a boat-race against Westminster, an unusually large number of boys were sent up to the ' Library ' to be flogged, but lo, block and birches had alike disappeared ! Hawtrey was very in- dignant, and the whole truth came out before long. A trio of old Etonians, Lord Waterford, Lord Alford, and Mr. J. H. Jesse, had been giving a dinner at the ' Christopher ' to a party of boys after the boat-race, and had resolved to do something out of the way in the evening, before driving back to town. They accordingly effected an entrance into Upper School by removing a panel of one of the great doors at the south end, and then made for the Library, " that scene of terror and punishment, where, as if in mockery of the culprits below, have been affixed the figures of festive maidens and triumphant heroes." '^ The door was closed, and proved too strong to be figures, &c. There is a story of a boy having drawn a picture of an eight-oar on the Mediterranean, manned by the Masters and steered by Dr. Keate, and lest there should be any mistake as to their identitj", having inscribed under the boat :— " Gens inimica mihi Tyrrhenum navigat aquor." ' See an amusing Vale by J. H. Arkwright (privately printed). ° Eton Bureau. THE RAPE OF THE BLOCK. 439 forced from without, but the window near it was open. Lord Waterford and Mr. Jesse got out, and, at some peril to their Hves, crept along the narrow ledge over the colonnade, and so climbed in at the next window, leaving their companion to cover their retreat. Once in the Library, it was a compara- tively easy matter for them to open the door, to carry off the familiar instruments of torture, and to place them in the drag which was waiting for them. The block was conveyed to London, and for a time formed the ofificial seat of the President of the ' Eton Block Club,' a club for which no one was eligible who had not been flogged three times at school. Two snuff- boxes were made of the wood, with silver mountings, and sent to Eton, the one to the Provost, and the other to the Head- Master. The block is now at Curraghmore. Soon after this, during the Ascot week of 1837, Mr. Jesse, encouraged by the success of the escapade, carried off the sceptre from Bird's statue of Henry VI. in the middle of the School Yard. This was very differently viewed by the boys, who were indignant at the insult to the memory of the Founder, as well as sorry for the injury to a work of art. The sceptre had been taken to the mess-room of the 1st Battalion of Grenadier Guards at Windsor, and it was found there under a seat on the following morning. The ofificers, of whom several were old Etonians, lost little time in restoring it to the Provost, deputing one of their number to explain the circumstances, and on their behalf to disclaim any complicity in the proceedings. The offender was treated with great forbearance, being merely required to tender a private apology. There was a boy at Eton about fifty years ago, who could personate Dr. Hawtrey to perfection. One evening he went to Horsford's house, accompanied by another Colleger repre- senting the Head-Master's servant, Finmore, and, on pretence of the discovery of some irregularity, ordered the bell to be rung and ' absence ' to be called by the Captain of the house. The imposture was not discovered by the boys, but Miss 440 EDWARD CRAVEN HAWTREY. Horsford's suspicions were aroused by the pseudo-Hawtrey's hurry to depart instead of lingering to say a few polite words to her. Nevertheless she was beguiled into a promise of secrecy.' On another occasion there was a grand masquerade in Long Chamber, and the Head-Master found it necessary to Dr. Hawtrey.^ go there in person in order to put an end to the uproar ; but the Collegers had so often been taken in that they greeted him with cries of " That won't do, Money. We know you well enough ! " Several minutes elapsed before they realised their mistake. In the early part of his administration, Hawtrey had a great deal of trouble year after year on the Fifth of November and following days, when the boys used to indulge in fireworks on a small scale, throwing lighted Greek Grammars about in the Information of Mr. T. Thring. From an original drawing taken in school by Herbert Herries, in the possession of Mr. J. H. Patteson. THE RIVER. 441 School Yard, and letting off squibs behind the Masters as they came into five o'clock school. The measures by which he ordinarily managed to rule the School proved unavailing, and at last he very injudiciously announced that he would expel any Etonians who should attempt to celebrate the anni- versary in the accustomed manner. Two small boys, one of whom was destined to attain the highest distinction as a man of science, were caught walking on the Brocas, with squibs in their pockets, and were summarily expelled. This act of severity on Hawtrey's part was much criticised in London, and it somewhat marred his early success. However, he lived down all temporary unpopularity, and boys and parents alike came to recognise the nobleness of his character. In his second year, the number of names on the School-list was only 444, but in the course of the next ten years he raised it gradually up to the unprecedented total of "JTJ, an achieve- ment of which he was justly proud. The relations between Masters and boys became more satis- factory as some of the old fictions were given up. One con- sequence of the ridiculous system by which the authorities ignored boating was, that boys who had no idea of swimming risked their lives on the river daily, and casualties were not unfrequent. A specially sad case was that of young Angerstein, who was drowned in 1820, near Surly Hall, under the very eyes of his companions, who did not know how to rescue him. In the month of May, 1840, directly after Charles F. Montagu had been drowned close to Windsor Bridge, Mr. G. A. Selwyn, a private tutor at Eton, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield,' and Mr. William Evans, the Drawing-Master, made an energetic remonstrance against the policy which had been pursued from time immemorial. At their suggestion, boating ' Bishop Selwyn was enthusiastic about rowing, and considered the Thames almost a sacred stream. Being one day in a punt with an Eton Master, H. Dupuis, who spat into the water, he exclaimed : " If you must spit, why don't you spit into the punt .'' " 442 BOATING. was formally recognised as a legitimate amusement, and a stringent rule was made to the effect that no boy should be allowed to set foot in a boat who had not passed an examina- tion in swimming. Bathing-places were made at ' Athens,' Upper Hope, and Cuckoo Weir, and watermen were engaged to give lessons in swimming, and to watch the river. Thence- forth it was impossible for boys to carry guns or forbidden luxuries in their boats, as they had often done before. The Collegers, who had hitherto kept their boats at a wharf in the Lower Shooting Fields, and had been in the habit of rowing to Datchet and the ' Bells of Ouseley ' were put on the same footing as the Oppidans, and forbidden to go below Romney Lock without special leave. The boat-race against Westminster, to which allusion has already been made, was rowed at Staines in the middle of the summer half of 1836, and was won by the Etonians in spite of a false start and several intentional ' fouls.' ' An immense number of boys had come over in every describable and in- describable vehicle that could be procured, and they drove back through Windsor " holloaing and hurrahing all the way like mad fellows." On their return, they found themselves more than half-an-hour late for ' absence,' and were greeted with the news that they must all answer to their names at one o'clock, in the middle of their playtime, for the next week.'' On the 4th of May in the following year, the Westminster crew came in first at Datchet, to the great mortification of William IV., who had been watching the contest with keen interest ; he instantly pulled up his carriage window and drove home. He died a few weeks afterwards.^ There was to have been a race between the rival eights at Putney in 1838, during the Eton holidays, but at the last moment the Westminster authorities managed to detain the boys who ' Blake-Humfrey's Eton Boating Book, p. 12. " Life of Rowland Williams, yic>\. i. p. 26. 3 Reminiscences Rogers, pp. 14, 15. of William GAMES. 443 were to have rowed. Westminster won at Putney in July 1842, 184s, and 1846 ; Eton won in 1843 and 1847.' A four- oared race was rowed at Eton between representatives of the Dames' and the Tutors' houses in 1834, and, three years later, a similar race was rowed between boys boarding on the North and the South sides of College. Both of these amicable con- tests entered upon a new phase in 1846, when the rival crews rowed in eight-oared boats, and they have been annual ever since. The formal recognition accorded to boating in 1840 was afterwards extended to the unpretending game of ' fives,' hitherto played exclusively in the School Yard between the buttresses of the Church. At the instigation of Mr. E. H. Pickering and Mr. J. G. Mountain, Dr. Hawtrey laid the foundation-stone of some regular Fives' Courts in Trotman's Garden, on the Eton Wick Road in 1840, and declared the site to be within ' bounds.' As soon as the ceremony was over, the Lower-Master unexpectedly stepped forward and delivered a Latin oration, which proved to be an elaborate piece of banter on the Head-Master's unfamiliarity with ath- letic sports. Hockey, although forbidden, was often played in Hawtrey's time in a field near the new Sanatorium. The peculiar variety of the game of football, which could only be played in a narrow strip of ground adjoining ' the wall ' of Fifteen Arch Bridge, was very popular, especially among the Collegers. Quoits, tops, and marbles, had disappeared in Keate's days. Cricket matches were played at Lord's every year in the first week of the summer holidays, against Harrow and against Winchester.^ On the 2nd of August 1834, Eton was playing -against both schools simultaneously, the match against Winchester being begun when there were • B\ak^-}i\xcaix&y's Eton Boating 1839, 1840, 1841, 1844, 1845, 1846, Book, passim. i847, and 1850 ; and against Win- ' Lillywhite's Public School Chester in 1834, 1835, 1836, 1839, Matches. Eton won the matches 1841, 1842, 1844, 1846, 1847, 1848, against Harrow in 1835, 1837, 1838, 1849, and 1850. 444 CRICKET. still six Eton wickets to go down in the match against Harrow. The tyrannical system by which lower boys were made to fag at cricket was abolished in the early part of Hawtrey's reign, and with it necessarily perished the kindly Fellows' Pond and Sheep Bridge. rule that if a fifth form boy standing by a fag succeeded in ' catching out ' the batsman, he could claim immunity for the fag. The Lower Shooting Fields were greatly improved in 1840, by the demolition of a wharf and house which occupied most of the space beyond ' Sixth form bench,' and which had THE ETON SOCIETY. 445 proved very useful in bygone days when goods were fre- quently conveyed to Eton by water. Poaching expeditions have been unknown since the establishment of the ' Eton College Hunt,' which keeps a pack of beagles by subscription ; and there has not been any abuse of the late Duke of Buc- cleuch's kindness in allowing Eton boys to walk freely through his preserves at Ditton. Hawtrey is said to have been inno- cent enough to imagine that a distinctive button worn by members of the Hunt was intended as a delicate compliment to himself, inasmuch as it bore his initials, E. C. H.' Shortly before the demolition of Mrs. Hatton's house, the Eton Society, in 1846, changed its quarters to a room in the yard of the old ' Christopher ' Inn, and by the removal it lost the doubtful advantages resulting from its proximity to the eating-house. This change of habitation gave rise to a clever parody on Byron's Maid of Athens, beginning : — " Maid of Hatton's ! ere we part, Warm me one more currant-tart ; Or, since that is left undressed. Give no change, but keep the rest, Hark ! a cheer before we go, /3o^ Kopy aydfifp ! " ^ The new rooms being in want of furniture, the Society launched out into lavish expenditure, and thereby incurred a large debt, which a sinking fund did not materially reduce. By 1850, the creditors had become clamorous, and the institu- tion was saved from insolvency only by the generous help of old members. The 'chairman' who canvassed them one by one, and thus guided the Society safely through a serious financial crisis, has grown up to be Secretary to the Treasury. There were several performances of amateur theatricals during Hawtrey 's time, but the young actors aspired to little " Etoniana, p. 180. A list of the 1 Eton College Chronicle, No. 438. Masters and Whips is given in the I ' Eton School Maga:^inc, p. 155. 446 WILLIAM IV. beyond farces and burlesques. The magazines of the period were the Eton Classical Casket of 1840, edited by A. F. Westmacott and H. Kirwan, the Eton Bureau of 1842,' and the Eton School Magazine of 1847 and the following year. In 1 841, the boys had an extra week's holiday in honour of the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the College, erroneously supposed to have taken place in 1441,^ and there was a greater gathering than usual at the annual dinner of old Etonians in London. The Marquess Wellesley was invited to preside, but he excused himself on the score of his great age, and Lord Denman took the chair instead.^ Seven years previously, William IV. had presented to the College a large silver-gilt model of the Chapel, made by Bridge of Ludgate Hill, to serve as an ornament at these dinners and on other festive occasions.* William IV. was very popular at Eton. In one of the best of the annual addresses delivered before him in Upper School, George Smythe, the hero of Disraeli's Coningsby, greeted the King with genuine enthusiasm : — " Thou (like thy Sire) on us art pleased to bend The gracious looks of Patron — Father — Friend, Till in thy cheering smile consoled we see Another George — our loved — our lost, in thee.'' ■ The contributors were C. W Johnson (Furse), W. Johnson (Cory), W. B. Marriott, H. A. Simonds, H. J. Coleridge, G. H. Money, J. F. Mackarness (Bishop of Oxford), and J. D. Coleridge (Lord Coleridge). ° The Charter of Foundation is dated October 11, 19 Henry VI., which was certainly October 11, 1440. Yet the Royal Commissioners of 1861, the authors of the Annals of Windsor, and even the author of Etoniana, give the date of the Charter as 1441; and this latter year is quoted in most books as the date of the foundation. Again, it has often been stated that the founda- tion-stone of the Church was laid on the 3rd of July, 1441, simply because the Building Accounts begin on that day. Thus the date assigned to the laying of the foundation stone is conjectural, while that commonly assigned to the foundation of the College is distinctly wrong. 3 Arno\i\^% Memoir of Lord Den- man, \-o\. ii. pp. 127—129. * Gentlemaii s Magazine, 1834. ROYAL PATRONAGE. 447 The Queen, too, received her due meed of praise : — " Inspired by thee, oh, long may England's fair Look to the throne, and find example there ; And copying thee, and thus resistless made. Still reign o'er subject hearts, like Adelaide." ' In May 1834, the King invited all the boys to witness the launching of a miniature frigate at Virginia Water ; and when he returned to Windsor the next year, after an absence of some months, about four hundred of them went up to the Long Walk to meet him, and ran along beside his carriage up to the Castle, cheering all the way.^ His last appearance in public was at the Eton and Westminster boat-race of 1837, already noticed.3 On the day of his death, not a wicket was pitched in the Playing Fields ; not a boat went up the river. The grandest illuminations ever known at Eton were those which took place on the occasion of the marriage of Queen Victoria in February, 1840. A huge structure, hung with upwards of 5,000 lamps, was erected in the wide space opposite the entrance of Weston's Yard, but by a strange incongruity the design selected was that of a Grecian temple. Another temporary structure covered with laurel, and hung with lamps, spanned the road opposite to the ' Christopher.' The School Yard and the western front of the Upper School were also brilliantly lighted up.* The King of Prussia visited the College in 1842, and remarked on the fact that its foundation was as nearly as possible coeval with the invention of moveable types in printing. Perhaps it was ort this account that he presented to the Eton Library one of the two sumptuous copies of the Niebelungen, which were printed on vellum in honour of the fourth centenary of Gutenberg, the other copy being reserved for ' Eton Addresses. ■* Grey's Early Years of the ' Life 0/ Rowland William', \o\. Prince Consort, p. 465; Yonge's i. pp. 12, 19. Life of Bishop Patteson, vol. i. p. 3 Page 442. 23. 448 THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. the Library at Berlin." Louis Philippe also came to Eton when he was in England in October, 1844, accompanied by the Queen and Prince Albert.^ The Duke of Wellington, who was in attendance on the royal party, happened to lag behind in the School Yard, and received an unexpected ovation, masters and boys alike waving their hats and cheering the great Etonian warrior with all their might.3 Two years previously, the Duke's elder brother had been buried with great pomp in the Collegiate Church. During a long and eventful life the Marquess Wellesley had retained the warmest love for the scene of his early triumphs, and a short time before his death he had caused six ' willows of Babylon ' to be planted by the waterside in the Lower Shooting Fields, soon after the removal of the wharf It was by his own ex- press desire that he was buried at Eton, and he composed the following beautiful lines for his epitaph : — " Fortuncz rarumque vagis exercitus undis, In gremium redeo serus, Etona, tuuni. Magna sequi, et summce mirari culmina famce, Et purum antiquce lucis adire jubar. Auspice te didici puer, atque in limine vitce Ingenuas verce laudis amare vias. Si qua meuni vita decursu gloria nomen Auxerit, aut si quis nobilitarit honos, Muneris, Alma, tui est. Altrix da terra sepulchrum, Supremam lacrymam da memoremque mei." ^ " One hundred copies were printed on paper. The following is a translation of the inscription : — " To Eton School, the guardian of the hope of the rising generation, the promoter of the old Saxon in- tellect, this hero-poem of the German people, and memorial of the jubilee of a German invention, is presented in memory of his visit in January 1842, and in gratitude for his affectionate reception, by Frederick William, King of Prussia. Berlin, June 18, 1844." ' A French account of Eton written in connexion with this visit is preserved as a literary curiosity, on account of its numer- ous errors, in Knight's Pictorial Half-hours, vol. iv. p. 127. 3 Yonge's Life of Bishop Patle- son, vol. i. pp. 43 — 44. ■• Antiual Register, vol. Ixxxiv. pp. 159, 160, 518; Memoir of the Rev. F. Hodgson, vol. ii. p. 271. THE MARQUESS WELLESLEY. 449 These lines have been translated into English verse more than once, the most graceful rendering being that of an Etonian, who, like their author, was at once a scholar and a statesman, the late Earl of Derby : — " Long tost on Fortune's waves, I come to rest, Eton, once more on thy maternal breast. On loftiest deeds to fix the aspiring gaze. To seek the purer lights of ancient days. To love the simple paths of manly truth, — These were thy lessons to my opening youth. If on my later life some glory shine. Some honours grace my name, the meed is thine. My boyhood's nurse, my aged dust receive. And one last tear of kind remembrance give ! " Great and various as have been the changes at Eton since the lines were written, the School still inspires the same feelings of loyalty and affection in the hearts of those who have had the happiness of being educated within its walls. Eton College, F7-otn the Terrace^ Windsor Castle. G G ETON MONTEM. I561-1847. ITTLE more than forty years have elapsed since the last celebration of the famous ' Montem,' and some old Etonians still lament its de- parted glories. A ceremony so ancient and so singular has naturally attracted the notice of curious antiquaries, but their speculations as to its origin and meaning are more ingenious than convincing. The most popular theory seeks to connect the ' Captain of Montem ' with the proscribed Boy-Bishop, the Salt-bearers with the Deacons, and the banner with the pastoral-staff,' although it is certain that in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth, the procession of Etonians ad montem took place a full month later than the day on which, in the reign of Henry VIII., the Boy-Bishop used to be stripped of his dignities. William Malim makes separate mention of the two anniversaries in his Consuetudinarium.'' The following is a translation of what he says about the peculiar observances at Salt Hill : — ' Brand's Popular Antiquities, ed. 1813) vol. i. p. 338. ° See pages 141, 148, above. MONTEM IN 1361. 451 " About the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, at nine o'clock on a day chosen by the Master, the boys go to the Hill {ad inontein), according to the wonted manner in which they go to gather nuts in the month of September. The Hill is a sacred spot in the youthful devotion of Etonians ; on account of the beauty of the country, the pleasantness of the greensward, the coolness of the shade, the sweet harmony of the birds,' they dedicate the retreat to Apollo and the Muses, they celebrate it in song, call it Tempe, and extol it above Helicon. Here the novices, or freshmen, who have not yet served manfully and stoutly for a whole year in the Etonian ranks, standing up to the lash, are first sprinkled with salt, and then admirably described in little poems seasoned with all the wit {saleni) and humour that can be mustered. Then they make epigrams on the new boys, vying with one another in smoothness and wit. They may say whatever comes uppermost, provided it be in Latin, courteously expressed, and free from offensive buffoonery. Finally they bedew their faces with salt tears, and then at last are initiated into the rites of veterans. Ovations follow, and little triumphs, and the novices rejoice in good earnest that their toils are over, and that they are adopted into the fellowship of such lively comrades. When all is over the boys return at five o'clock,^ and after supper play until eight." This is the earliest account of Montem, and in it we find at least four of the features which characterised the ceremony in the present century, viz. the procession to Salt Hill (a small mound near Slough), the affectation of military disci- pline,3 the exaction of some sort of tribute from freshmen, and a constant allusion to salt. ' " Canorum avium concentum," omitted in the printed versions. ' " Ad horam quintam" not " ad horam ^rnnam," as given in the printed versions. 3 This is not so clear in an Eng- lish translation as in^ the Latin, where we find several words and phrases derived from terms used in Roman warfare, as — " ad verbc a steterunt," '' in acie Etonensi" " veterani" " ovationes et parui tri- umphi." G G 2 452 ETON MONTEM. From the remotest ages, salt has borne a mystic sense, and, without entering upon the history of its symbolism, it may be remarked that in the middle ages, salt was used in baptism, the sacrament by which candidates were admitted into the privileges of the Christian Church. Hence, probably the origin of its use in the rites by which novices were admitted into the privileges of Eton freemasonry.' We have no means of ascertaining the exact date at which these rites were discon- tinued, but in the first half of the eighteenth century real salt was still employed at Eton Montem, a pinch of it being presented to all strangers who gave money towards the expenses of the day. It has been very ingeniously suggested that this was intended to symbolise the admission, for the time being, to the festivities, of those who had duly paid their footing.^ However this may be, it seems clear that when the more business-like plan was adopted of giving tickets rather than salt in exchange for contributions, the money thus received was in its turn called salt. In other words, the traditional cry — " Salt, Salt," of the young tax-gatherers, which in modern times meant "Give us salt (money)," was originally intended to mean, "We will give you salt in ex- change for your money." Roger Huggett, one of the conducts, thus describes the practice of his own day, rather more than a hundred years ago :^ " Two of the scholars called Salt-bearers, dressed in white, with a handkerchief of salt in their hands, and attended each with some sturdy young fellow hired for the occasion, go round the College and through the town, and from thence up into the high road, and offering salt to all, but scarce leaving it to their choice whether they will give or not ; money they will have, if possible, and that even from servants." That the claim of right to enforce payment was of long ' See Appendix B on Rites of l ■" Eto7iiana, p. 151. Initiation at Eton. I ''SALT." 453 standing is shown by the audacity of the Salt-bearers in stopping the carriage of WiUiam III., to the great surprise of ^ ■ "Salt! Salt! the Dutch Guards, who took them for highwaymen and would have cut them down if the King had not interfered.^ There ' Adapted from a plate in Sketches of Eton and Oxford. ' The authority for this state- ment is a tradition in the Hawtrey family, which has seldom been without a representative at Eton for upwards of two centuries. 454 ETON MONTEM. is a still more emphatic statement of the claim in a magazine published in 17 12 : — " When Boys at Eton once a Year In Military Pomp appear, He who just trembled at the Rod, Treads it a Heroe, talks a God, And in an instant can create A Dozen Officers of State. His little Legion All assail. Arrest without Release, or Bail ; Each passing Traveller must halt. Must pay the Tax, and eat the Salt. You don't love Salt you say — and storm — Look o' these Staves, Sir — and conform" ' Montem is here mentioned as an annual festival^ and such it continued to be until 1758, after which date it was held less frequently. In 1775, a definite rule was made, that so patent an interruption of the ordinary school work should be tole- rated only once in three years, and this rule continued in force until the total abolition of Montem in 1847. In Malim's time the Head-Master was free to select the most convenient day at the end of January for the procession to Salt Hill, but in the first half of the eighteenth century it always took place on the first Tuesday in Hilary Term, i.e. the first Tuesday after the 23rd of January. In 1758, and on all subsequent occasions it was held on Tuesday in Whitsun week.^ This was a great improvement in every way, for in some former years it had been necessary to cut a road ad montem through deep snow, and the chance of rain was somewhat less in May or June than in January. The alteration was noticed in a copy of verses written at the time by Benjamin Heath, the Captain of the School : — " Lcetior cestivo tempore pompa nitet."^ ' The Tunbridge Miscellany, | 3 Musce Etonenses, (1795) vol. i. 1712, p. 29. I p. 60. " Sloajie MS. 4839, f. 85. I CAPTAIN OF MONTE M. 45 5 Two years later, another writer expressed himself yet more clearly : — " Antehac brumali sonuerunt sidere nimbi, S(epe tuum texit cana priiina jugum, ScBpe nives dausere viam, vel turbidus iinber, Aut vattam irati spent rapuere Noti. Nunclevis aura favet, nunc formosissimus annus, Surgit et e gremio fertilis herba tuo." ' The glories of Salt Hill have often been extolled in Latin, for on the day preceding the observance of Montem, the senior Colleger had to present to the Head-Master a copy of verses, Pro more et monte, which may be looked upon as the quasi- feudal service by the performance of which, he, as Captain of the School, enjoyed the right of being ' Captain of Montem.' To attain this office has been the highest ambition of many a Colleger, partly on account of the honour conferred thereby, partly on account of the pecuniary advantages resulting from it. As far back as 1730, we find William Cooke writing : — ''Aureus ut spero Mons erit ilk mihi!' ^ Yet the appointment depended on the merest chance. It might at first sight appear that the rule by which the senior Colleger became ' Captain of Montem ' was simple enough, but it sometimes happened that the boy who stood first on the School-list at the beginning of the summer half, lost his claim through no fault of his own ; for in the event of a death or resignation among the seventy members of King's College, he was certain to be summoned to repair to Cambridge, to fill the vacant place. A grace of twenty days only was allowed, ' Verses by D. Stevenson in a MS. book belonging to Sir Wil- loughby Jones, Bart. Nevertheless, we read that in 1775 the proceedings at Salt Hill were interrupted by " the most remarkable storm of hail and rain ever remembered in that part of the country. The hail- stones were as large as playing- marbles." — Annual Register, vol. xviii. p. 128. " Musce Etonenses,\d\.. ii. p. 114. 456 ETON MO NT EM. and if it expired on the very eve of Montem Day, the right of being Captain lapsed to the next Colleger on the list. Thus the two persons most interested in the matter were kept in suspense until the close of the twentieth day before Tuesday in Whitsun week.' On the night of the critical day, all the Collegers sat up later than usual in Long Chamber, awaiting the possible arrival of a messenger from Cambridge. Just before midnight they all took up their appointed places. Some raised the ends of their beds high in the air ; others stood by the heavy wooden shutters ; and as the clock in Lupton's Tower gave out the last stroke, they slammed the shutters, and dropped the beds on the floor with a crash that could be heard in distant Windsor. There was a deafening shout of " Montem sure ! " The right of being ' Captain of Montem ' vested absolutely in the senior Colleger, and feasting and revelry were prolonged into the small hours of the morning.^ From that time forward the boys occupied themselves in making pi'eparations for Montem, such as ordering, and trying on, the gorgeous clothes in which they were to appear. The ' tasting-dinners ' given at Salt Hill by the Captain to the sixth form formed a very objectionable part of the system in the present century. On the eventful day, the twelve boys whose duty it was to assist the Salt-bearers by collecting money on the different high roads in the county of Bucking- ham, started at dawn, some on foot, and some in gigs, for their respective stations. 3 These twelve Servitors, or Runners, as they were commonly styled, were Collegers in the sixth form. ' The first and second Collegers often arranged at Easter that whichever of them became Captain of Montem should pay 50/. to the other. ° Etoniana, p. 153. 3 Two Runners were generally j as Dropmore, posted at Maidenliead Bridge, two at Windsor Bridge, two at Datchet Bridge, two at Colnbrook, one at Iver, one at Gerard's Cross, one at Slough, and one at Salt Hill. They generally breakfasted at country houses in the neighbourhood, such SALT-BEARERS. 457 or in Upper Division, exercising the same powers as the Salt- bearers, and like them, wearing fancy costumes. They carried satin money-bags and painted staves with mushroom-shaped tops on which were inscribed Latin or Greek quotations, such as "Parcentes ego dexteras odi" and " 'Ef aKod.; twelve pole- men, 3J. bd. each, 2/. is ; Binfield, for painting flag and truncheon, 2/. 7.S. ; to Kendall for supper, 25/. 12J. isd. ; claret from London, 9/. ; 5i yards of crimson silk, i yard of blue silk, and white riband for flag, 2/. 14J. ; Pitt and March for Salt bearers' men's dresses, 4/. i is. ; Larder for dinner, etc , 23/. 19J. ; Mr. March for Salt Hill expenses, 45/. 9J. 6rf." COSTUMES WORN. 459 among themselves which of them should act as College Salt- bearer, Marshal, Ensign, Lieutenant, Serjeant-Major, and Steward. The remaining three King's Scholars in the sixth form were either Serjea,nts or Runners. The Captain of the Oppidans was always a Salt-bearer, and the next to him on the School-list was Colonel. The other Oppidans in the sixth form ranked as Serjeants, and the Oppidans in the fifth form as Corporals. All those who bore military titles figured in red tail-coats, white trousers, cocked hats and feathers, and regimental boots, with the distinctive details of uniform de- noting their titular rank. The Steward wore the ordinary full dress of the period. The lower boys and most of the fifth form Collegers (who by a curious anomaly occupied a lower rank than Oppidans of the same standing in school) wore blue coats with brass buttons, and white waistcoats and trousers,' and carried thin white poles, from which they derived the, name of Polemen. In the early part of the eighteenth cen- tury,-the boys had been in the habit of hiring theatrical dresses from costumiers in London, and it was in Dr. Barnard's time that a rule was made by which only the two Salt-bearers, the twelve Runners, and a limited number of ' Servants,' were allowed to indulge their own tastes and vagaries in the matter. These Servants were Oppidans in the Remove or fourth form, selected from such as could afford a costly dress and were likely to look well in it, to wait on the principal officers and to follow them in the procession. As soon as ' absence ' had been called, the boys fell into their appointed order, and marched twice round the School Yard, and thence into Weston's Yard, where the Ensign waved the great emblazoned flag, a feat requiring many pre- vious rehearsals. =" Then the Corporals drew their swords, and ' The trousers and boots were first substituted for Icnee-breeches, silk stockings and pumps, in 1826. Gaskell's Records of an Eton Schoolboy (privately printed), p. 14. In 1841, a rule was made that the Collegers should wear the uniform of lieutenants in the Royal Navy. Berkshire Chronicle, May 8, 1 841. ' In and after 1832, the proces- 46o ETON MONTEM. cut the staves of the Polemen asunder. After this, they all proceeded through the Playing Fields to Salt Hill in a long line, accompanied by two or three regimental bands.' Thither also went the numerous visitors who had come from all parts of England to witness what has been aptly called a " Protestant Carnival." ^ Sheridan alludes to people driving to Salt Hill " to see the Montem," armed with loaded pistols wherewith to defend themselves against highwaymen.3 George HI. was present at almost every celebration of Eton Montem during the brighter years of his long reign ; sometimes, as in 1778, driving Queen Charlotte in an unpretending chaise ; ♦ some- times, as in 1796, and 1799, riding on horseback, and personally marshalling the crowd. The Duke of Cumberland was one of the royal party in 1799, and rode about with so little formality, that nobody could have guessed his exalted station. A boy named Beckett actually said to him, " I should recom- mend you, my friend, not to let your horse tread upon me!' ^ George IV., William IV., and Queen Victoria, have succes- sively graced the Eton triennial festival with their presence. On arriving at Salt Hill, the Ensign waved the flag for the second time at the top of the Mount, and with this the cere- mony ended, at each of the last twenty-two celebrations of Montem. In earlier times, two of the Collegers, dressed to represent a Parson and a Clerk, used immediately after the waving of the flag to gabble some mock prayers in Latin, sion went three times round the men apiece, second Band, Ensign School Yard, the flag being waved there instead of in Weston's Yard. ' The order of procession was generally as follows : — Marshal followed by six Servants, Band, Captain followed by eight Servants, Serjeant-Major followed by two Servants, twelve Serjeants, two and two, each followed by a Ser- vant, Colonel followed by six Ser- vants and four Polemen, Corporals, two and two, followed by two Pole- followed by six Servants and four Polemen, Corporals, two and two, followed by one or two Polemen apiece. Lieutenant followed by four Servants, [Salt-bearers, Servitors], Steward followed by a Poleman. ^ Disraeli's Coningsby, chap. xi. 3 School for Scandal, act v. sc. 2. * Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i., pp. 338, 346. 5 An7iual Register, vol. xxxviii. p. 20 ; Hone's Year Book. lijilⅈlii;illMl;Alb;ii^^^^ U SALT HILL. 461 They were of course restricted to black clothes, but even these admitted of considerable variety ; and on some occa- sions the Parson caused a great deal of amusement by appearing in the antiquated clerical costume of a past generation, or in that of a high dignitary of the Church, with cassock and bands, bushy wig and broad beaver, amusement which reached its height when, according to im- memorial custom, he proceeded to kick the Clerk from the top of the hill to the bottom.' Queen Charlotte was so much shocked at witnessing this performance in 1778, that at her request it was never repeated, and the Parson and Clerk dis- appeared from the Montem procession, being relegated to Long Chamber, where, on ' Montem-sure-night,' the Clerk, the most dirty and disagreeable lower boy, was made to stand up on one shoulder of the fireplace, and was pelted with bread or anything else, harder or softer, that came to hand.= 'Absence' was called at Salt Hill in the middle of the day, after which the royal party usually returned to Windsor, and the visitors and the boys adjourned to the two local inns, the ' Windmill ' and the ' Castle,' to dine. In Huggett's time, a little more than a century ago, the Head-Master entertained the Assistant-Masters and his own friends, and the Captain gave a dinner (cooked in the College kitchen) to the fifth and sixth forms, and to any lower boys who chose to pay ioj. 6d. for it, and 2s. 6d. for ' salt money.' It was then customary for every boy to pay at least a shilling for salt ; and a special tax called " recent-money " was also levied on all who had not completed their first year at Eton.3 Con O'Neale, son of the Earl of Tyrone, received a shilling "upon salting day" in 161 7.* In later times, these payments were no longer made, and the entertainments at Salt Hill proved a source of great ' Etoniana, p. 147. - Montem Lists, 1773— 1832. 3 Sloane MS. 48391 f- ^S- See Appendix B on Rites of Initiation at Eton. "• Third Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, p. 265. 462 ETON MONTE M. expense to the Captain, especially when there was an unusual breakage of plates and glasses. After dinner a general promenade took place in the gardens of the inns, and if the Captain happened to be unpopular much injury was done to the shrubs and flowers, for the express purpose of swelling the landlord's bill against him.' " The boys along the garden strayed. With short curved dirk high brandished Smote off the towering onion's head, And made e'en doughty cabbage feel The vengeance of their polished steel." Later in the afternoon, the procession returned in the order in which it had come. When Barnard was Provost, the Captain, accompanied by the young noblemen, used to call on him with a request that the next day should be a holiday for the whole School.^ In the present century, the day before Montem and the day after it were holidays, the latter being styled " Montem-rest Day." Windsor Terrace presented an animated scene in the evening, the boys in their fantastic costumes mingling with the crowd of visitors. The members of the fifth form used to wear their red coats until the end of the summer half, and \yere in consequence nick-named "Lobsters." ' Hone's Year Book. " MS. Diary of Dr. Jonathan Davies. This MS. contains notices of several Montems. — 1775. " Doors opened quarter before six, absence in the yard half an hour after 10. Master calls on the Lower Master at breakfast and to see the com- pany. The uppermost Colleger of the not accepted calls absence at the hill at three o'clock .... come to absence at sixe. The Captain missed an exercise for his Pro more et monte, but it ought not to be so." 1778. "Montem as before, ex- cept that the Captain Hayes had more musick than usual, which is not to be a precedent." 1784. " The Captain's company at the supper too noisy and riotous — to be ordered to break up at 8 and by \ after." Contemporary notices of subse- quent Montems may be found in the Annual Register, the Gentle- matis Magazine, the Courier, the Mirror, the World, the Berkshire Chronicle, and other periodicals and newspapers. See also The Cockneys at Montem, by W. M. Stone, in the Sporting Magazine, vol. Ixxv. and Etoniana, pp. 226 — 230 MONTEM ODE. 463 No account of Montem-day would be complete without some notice of the Ode, which was composed for the occasion, and which, irrespectively of its merits or demerits, always had a large sale among visitors and Etonians. It was a broad-side of doggerel punning rhymes, giving the names of the chief personages in the procession, and alluding to their individual characteristics. It professed to be written by a worthy styled the " Montem-Poet," but in reality it was the production of some youthful wags in the School. The office of Montem- Poet was held throughout the reign of Keate by Herbert Stockhore of Windsor, an eccentric individual who had begun life as a bricklayer. Arrayed in a tunic and trousers of patchwork, an old military coat, and a chintz-covered conical head-dress, with rows of fringe on it like the crowns on a papal tiara, he drove about in a donkey-cart, reciting his Ode, and flourishing copies of it in the air to attract the attention of possible customers.' After his death, there was a contest for the vacant office, and a certain Edward Irving was elected, the boys recording their votes as they came out of Chapel one afternoon. Montem was a unique institution, and as such exposed to much criticism ; it had many opponents and many supporters. Among the latter was the writer of the following and other stanzas : — " Farewell to thee, Montem ! They say 'tis the last ; But I will not believe it till three years are past. And then if I find that dear Montem is gone I'll go to Salt Hill, and keep Montem alone. " I will not believe it, the gay and the wise In defence of dear Montem indignant shall rise, The voice of old Eton shall sound in the Hall, And the Provosts shall start from their frames on the wall. ' English Spy, vol. i. p. 69 — 71, 75 — 77. 464 ETON MONTE M. " Oh ! yes, thou shalt still be our dearly lov'd scene, For thou hast been honour'd by King and by Queen, Recorded and sung of, in prose and in rhyme. But most thou art honour'd and hallow'd by Time. " Farewell to thee Montem ! return in three years With crowdings and crushings, with flutters and fears, Barouches and bonnets, swords, sashes, and salt. And let them pay double who still will find fault." ' The same sentiment is expressed in an article in Knights Quarterly Magazine : — " I love that no-meaning of Montem. I love to be asked for ' Salt ' by a pretty boy in silk stockings and satin doublet, though the custom has been called ' something between begging and robbing.' I love the apologetical ' mos pro lege ' which defies the police and the Mendicity Society. I love the absurdity of a Captain taking prece- dence of a Marshal, and a Marshal bearing a gilt baton, at an angle of forty-five degrees from his right hip ; and an Ensign flourishing a flag with the grace of a tight-rope dancer ; and Sergeants paged by fair-skinned Indians and beardless Turks ; and Corporals in sashes and gorgets, guarded by innocent Polemen in blue jackets and white trousers. I love the mixture of real and mock dignity ; the Provost in his cassock, clearing the way for the Duchess of Leinster to see the Ensign make his bow ; or the Head- Master gravely dispensing his leave till nine to Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, and Grand Signiors. I love the crush in the cloisters and the mob on the Mount. I love ■the clatter of carriages and the plunging of horsemen. I love the universal gaiety, from the peer who smiles and sighs that he is no longer an Eton boy, to the country-girl who marvels that such little gentlemen have cocked hats and real swords. Give me a Montem with all its tom- foolery — I had almost said before a coronation — and even ' Farewell to Montem, by William Selwyn, 1832. EVILS OF MONTEM. 465 without the aids of a Perigord-pie and a bottle of claret at the Windmill." • This was the bright side of Montem. An unfriendly critic might paint it in very different colours. Whether he stig- matised the manner in which salt-money was obtained as " something between alms and plunder," ^ whether he de- scribed the procession to Salt Hill as an absurd pageant, only to be mentioned in the same breath with the Lord Mayor's Show, whether he deplored the neglect of the ordinary studies of the School during Montem half, or whether he denounced the temptations to extravagance and to actual vice created by Montem, he might fairly say that there was urgent need of radical reform in the matter. Provost Hodgson was one of those who thought that no amount of reform would suffice, but, knowing as he did how sincerely many old Etonians were attached to Montem, he did not care to start any controversy on the subject until he could be sure of the moral support of the authorities in School and College, and so, without making any secret of his own opinions, he waited for what he knew must come sooner or later. Dr. Hawtrey and the Assistants were aware of the bad moral influence of Montem, and when the Bishop of Lincoln proposed to hold a Confirmation at Eton in the course of a Montem half, he was told plainly that it would not do for him to come then. The opening of the Great Western Railway had the effect of bringing down a promiscuous horde of sightseers to the Montem of 1841. The disadvantages of such publicity were felt by all, and steps were taken to counteract them as much as possible. It was arranged that the procession of 1844 should start an hour later than usual, that refreshments should be provided in a tent at Salt Hill, and that the boys should be forbidden to set foot inside the inns or the gardens. ' KnigMs Quarter^/ Magazine, I ° Mathias's Pursuits of Liter- vol. i. pp. 197 — 198. I ature. H H 466 ETON MONTEM. They were moreover required to return to the Playing Fields in time to answer to their names at half-past three o'clock ' absence,' and the dinners, which strangers could be allowed to witness only under certain restrictions, were given on Fellows Eyot at four o'clock. But these precautions did not suffice to remedy the greater evils of Montem, and in October 1846 Hodgson received a letter from Hawtrey suggesting tlie total abolition of the festival, and enclosing a letter from Mr. Okes, the Lower-Master, to the same effect. Feeling as he did on the matter, he responded cordially to this overture, and a few days later Hawtrey wrote again as follows : — " I am heartily glad that you have not changed your Opinion as I have mine about Montem. My Secession from its Supporters must, I think, go for something ; for it is eicdiv deKovTt ye 6vij,o^ that 1 avow my Wish for its Abolition. No one, I believe, has wasted more Money and spent more Time than myself in trying to remove its Evils, and even now, conscientiously persuaded as I am that those Evils are incorrigible, and that with them no custom could or ought to be tolerated, I feel so strongly the manifold Benefits of the grand Eton Meeting, that I sacrifice my Weakness, as Brutus did his Sons, eininente animo patrio inter publiccs pcencs ministerium. I do hope at the same Time, that something may be thought of as a Substitute in the way of an Eton Meeting." The Provost considered that according to the statutes he had full authority to settle the question, but, as a matter of courtesy, he took the Fellows into his counsel, and ascertained that three of them, Messrs. Grover, Bethell, and Green, shared his opinion, while the remaining four desired only to see a reform of abuses. The Assistant-Masters, who were also consulted, though less directly, turned the scale, nine of them being in favour of total abolition, five in favour of a reform of abuses, and one only in favour of the existing system. Perhaps the most curious defence of Montem was ABOLITION PROPOSED. 467 that set up by Mr. Plumptre, one of the Fellows, who, having somehow got an idea that the triennial procession to Salt Hill had taken the place of a pilgrimage to a shrine of the Virgin Mary, desired that the ceremonies, happily freed from superstition, should be retained as a symbol of the Reforma- tion, and a standing protest against Popery. There was a personage, more important than any Fellow or Master, whose wishes had to be consulted before any change could be made. The waving of the flag had generally been witnessed by some member of the royal family ; and the Queen and Prince Albert had attended Eton Montem in 1841 and 1844. Provost Hodgson therefore felt himself in duty bound to ascertain the wishes of the sovereign, and he pro- ceeded to lay the facts of the case before her. He received a reply to the effect that the Queen and the Prince would like to see the abuses attendant upon Montem removed, but that they felt very reluctant to consent to the total abolition of so ancient a custom. This would have been sufficient to dis- courage any one who was not acting from a sense of duty, but Hodgson was too much in earnest to yield without trying the effect of a more forcible statement of his views. He accord- ingly answered that, with all due deference to those to whom he owed so much both as a loyal subject and as Provost of Eton, he could not but think that the abuses alluded to were inevitable so long as Montem continued to be observed, and he forwarded the letters he had received on the subject from Dr. Hawtrey and Mr. Okes. After this, the Queen referred the matter to her constitutional adviser, and on the 7th of January, 1847, Lord John Russell wrote to say that the opinion of the outside world appeared to coincide with that of the Provost, and that her Majesty, though very unwilling to sanction by any direct act of her own the abolition of a custom so popular in the School, would not interpose to prevent any decision which the Eton authorities might form from their own experience and judgment. The Provost there- H H ? 46S ETON MONTEM. upon decreed that there should be no future celebration of Montem, and communicated his decision to those who were most likely to be affected by the change. In the month of February 1847, an idea got abroad that the question was still subjudice, as there had been no formal vote of College on it, and a meeting of the supporters of Montem was held in London. The result was a bombastic appeal to old Etonians not " to be made the dupes of a party of sanctified enthu- siasts." The Provost was much annoyed, but he was soon comforted by the receipt of numerous letters of sympathy and approval. The Lord Chief Justice Denman wrote as follows : — • "As there was to be a meeting, I was thinking of a letter of congratulation that it turned out such as it was. I cannot conceive anything less likely to prevent the valuable reform introduced at Eton, or more certain to recommend it to well judging persons. There is really not a word of argument in favour of the old and scandalous nuisance. That any persons can be found at this time favourable to a custom for young noblemen and gentlemen to go about the country as sturdy beggars obtaining money from passen- gers is truly surprising. I have been in fear ever since I sat on the Bench that some sturdier yeomen might resist the extortion with unpleasant consequences, and that the whole affair would be shown up, to the shame of all Etonians, in a public Court of Justice. ... If in these days it is thought desirable that some pecuniary advantage should be derived from the bounty of old Etonians to certain young men on their entrance into academical life, I cannot suppose that it would be left in the strange uncertain lottery which now decides in favour perhaps of the worst conducted and least deserving, to the bitter disappointment perhaps of one who may up to the last moment have reasonably expected it. . . . I am persuaded that a parliament of old Etonians, if summoned to legislate on this question, would have decided by a large majority as you have done.'' OPPOSITION. 469 The Bishop of Lincoln and the Provost of King's took the same Hne. Bishop Wilberforce, too, wrote :— " The consciousness of high motive, and, I doubt not, the issue of your Montem struggle will far more than repay you for a little contumelious usage." In the ordinary course of things, there would have been a procession ad montem on Tuesday in Whitsun week in that year, and as the time drew near the excitement increased. A second meeting of the anti-reformers was held on the 9th of May, and for a while there was an idea of presenting a petition to the Queen. Hawtrey explained his own position very frankly at the annual Eton dinner on the 22nd, but his speech was misreported and he was obliged to write to the principal London newspapers to disabuse people of the idea that the change was made in opposition to his own wishes, and to point out that, since the opening of the railway to Slough, Eton on Montem Day had become little better than Greenwich Fair. Then came rumours of an intended demon- stration at Salt Hill, and of a hearse having been hired to follow the old course of the procession. It was also understood that a party of malcontents were coming to break the windows of all the Masters, excepting Mr. Balston and Mr. H. M. Birch, the two who were supposed to be favourable to Montem. On the eve of the 25th, Hawtrey summoned the second Colleger into ' Chambers,' and asked him what he would do if there was an emeute on the following day. " I will head it, Sir," was the reply ; but after a fair argument, the boy was convinced that the authorities had reason on their side. On the same day, Hawtrey wrote to the Provost, who was absent at the time : " I do not know what to think of to-morrow. I fear nothing from the Boys ; but I have heard of an Under- graduate Onslaught from too many Quarters not to take Precautions. 30 London Police in plain Cloaths {sic) will be at Slough early to-morrow, and will act as Occasion may arise. There will be a Cricket Match with safe Men, 470 ETON MONTEM. and I have given Leave to the Eight to go up the River with Evans. I begin to hope that all will go off well, and of this I feel certain, that the upper Part of the School are perfectly right, and that if there is a Disturbance, it will be with Strangers who will suffer for it and — what is important — be known." Accounts of a great procession to Salt Hill, on the following day, appeared in the London newspapers, but Hawtrey, who rnust have known as well as any one what really took place, wrote as follows to the Provost : ' " A few Lower School and Fourth Form Boys broke three or four of the Upper School Windows. Three of these Heroes were seized and complained of by the 6th Form. A few hissed the Assistant at Absence. One of these was detected and punished. There was a little Fun of burying a Flag at Salt Hill, and that was all. The Mass of the School behaved perfectly well, and the Police went Home without an Action. There were a large Number of Windsor Election-Mob who came down in Hopes of finding a Row and were disappointed. . . . The black Flag Story is the Invention of the M\orning\ P\osi\, so are the white Scarfs. A Party of Lower Boys and Lower 5 th Form went to Salt Hill after 12, to see what they had been told would take place, in Letters from Oxford Undergraduates. When they arrived, they found themselves taken in. There were only a few Windsor Blackguards. There was no Procession in the Playing Fields, and no Collection taken by Boys at Salt Hill or after the Cricket Match. The latter was played by a Set of Men who asked my Leave and professed their Unwillingness to come if by coming they could be supposed to have any ill Intention. ... It is certain that the Upper Part of the School cared nothing about the Matter. If they had cared, there must have been a real Outbreak. There ' Many of the details, given in the last few pages, respecting the abolition of Monteni are derived from the extensive and valuable correspondence of the late Provost Hodgson. A brief summary only is given in the Memoir by his son. ABOUTION. 471 was nothing at all approaching the old Absence Rows, which used in Days gone by to take Place two or three Times every School-Term. " If the Procession had taken Place, as expected, I should have laughed at it as a mere Piece of English Fun, but it did not ; possibly it was never intended by the Oxford Children ; possibly they had heard of the Police." In his desire to act justly by all parties. Dr. Hawtrey had already given 200/. out of his own pocket to Mr. Gully, the father of the boy who would have been Captain of Montem ; ' and a few days after Whitsuntide he gave a great dinner in Upper School to those who would probably have attended Montem. In after years he used to speak of this dinner with great pleasure as one of the happiest episodes in his life. Since the abolition of the old triennial festival, with all its notorious evils, the Fourth of June has greatly risen in im- portance as a gathering-day of old Etonians. ' Berkshire Chronicle, May ij, 1847. ^ .^s^ags, .«»x MOS PRO LEGE. 1 1841. i y S)