to boys with a similar residence qualification. Thus we have a compromise which is an attempt to include a few boys of working class origin in a new, subordinate school, and so fulfil very perfunctorily and inadequately the intentions of the founder of the big school, which latter is now definitely the preserve of fee-paying boarders, sons of rich and well-to-do folk. Perhaps one ought, again, to remark here that a scholarship of £100 or £80 per annum, or a foundation scholarship freeing from tuition fees only, would render impracticable if not impossible, the entrance and maintenance in Rugby School proper of a poor man's son. Books and clothes alone at a public school are very costly items, too costly for working folk with a family of three to five children.

A

CHAPTER X

ST. PETER'S COLLEGE, WESTMINSTER

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SAXON SCHOLASTIC VIGNETTE-WILLIAM FITZ-STEPHen-The MEDIEVAL SCHOLAR AT WORK AND PLAY-COCK-FIGHTING IN THE SCHOOLS-JOHN STOW EXPOSES ECCLESIASTICAL CORRUPTION—ABBEY LANDS AND Revenues-Queen Elizabeth, FOUNDER-THE REFORMATION-INSISTENCE ON POVERTY-" COMMONS IN ELIZABETHAN DAYS -GABRIEL GOODMAN AND HIS FAIR ELMS-IN TIME OF SICKNESSGENTLE LANCELOT ANDREWES AND HIS SUMMER PUPILS-BRAVE DEAN AND IMPERIOUS QUEen-Origin of Bottled Ale-Fearsome CONSEQUENCEs of Libel-Laud and a Schoolmaster-THE SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD"!" MALIGNANCY"-How DR. BUSBY CONSERVED HIS AUTHORITY-HOUSE OF COMMONS CONTROL THE SCHOOLGEORGE Herbert-Richard BUSBY-" Modern" MIDAS-EARED CITY GRANDFATHERS, AND A CONTRAST-A LIBERAL SIXTEENTH CENTURY PARISH VESTRY-BUSBY'S EXPRESSION OF HIS GRATITUDE-Old BUILDINGS-A SHAKING OF THE Skeleton-ROMANTIC EPISODE OF THE COMMONWEALTH-Patronage and the Dean of Christ Church, OXFORD-FAMOUS WESTMINSTERS-AN ABSOLUTE AUTOCRACY-PAST AND PRESENT EMOLUMENTS-KING'S SCHOLARS-THE Pall Mall Gazette.

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ONE of the earliest references to the "Royal School of Westminster" occurs in the Description of Croyland Abbey-a series of chronicles erroneously attributed to the monk, Ingulphus (d. 1109), Abbot of Croyland and scribe or secretary to William the Bastard (otherwise afterwards the Conqueror)-now considered to be a spurious production of the fourteenth century. The unknown writer says there was a school at Westminster * which he used to attend, and that Queen "Edgitha (consort of Edward the Confessor) "would often, as he returned from school, oppose him touching his learning and lesson, and falling from grammar to logic, wherein she had some knowledge, she would subtilly conclude an argument with him and by her handmaiden give him

* Canon Westlake, the historian of Westminster, states (July, 1925) that he has discovered in the Chamberlain's Roll for the year 1339-40 the entry of a payment of 9s. 8d. to one John Payn for finding scholars for the Westminster School.

three or four pieces of money, and send him unto the palace where he should receive some victuals and then be dismissed."

The monk of Canterbury, William Fitz-Stephen, concivis et clericus et convictor (i.e., "fellow-citizen, chaplain and familiar friend") of Archbishop Thomas à Becket, as he calls himself, eye-witness of the murder of that "proud priest " before the altar of the cathedral, is the chief authority on the social life of London in the twelfth century. In his preface Descriptio nobilissima Londina, preceding his Life of St. Thomas à Becket, Fitz-Stephen speaks (temp. Henry II.) of medieval London's well-springs (De Fontibus) :—

"There are around London, in the outlying northern suburbs, certain excellent springs of sweet, salubrious, pellucid water, whose clear, swift runnels murmur over the shining stones. Among these, the holy well, the fountain of clergy, the sacred spring of St. Clement, by Temple Bar, may be acclaimed the greatest as being the most frequented by scholars from the schools, and by youths from the city, when, in the long summer evenings, they wander abroad to inhale the soft air. A fine healthy city, when it is blessed with a good ruler."

Later:

De Scholis ("concerning scholars ").

In London, the principal and celebrated schools of the church have exclusive privilege and ancient dignity. Nevertheless, sometimes by favour of some great personage, or of certain famous doctors distinguished in the knowledge of philosophy, other schools are by grace and permission allowed. On the days of church feasts, the masters together celebrate the festivals; the scholars dispute, some rhetorically, others dialectically. These rehearse arguments, those dispute merely for show, others for truth, which is the grace of perfection. The sophists, speaking with Socratic irony, are pronounced happy because of the mass and the volume of their words; others play upon words. Those learning rhetoric, speak with rhetorical speeches to the point with a view to persuasion, being careful to observe the precepts of their art, and to leave out nothing that belongs thereto. The boys of the different

schools vie with each other in verses, or dispute on the principles of grammar, or the rules of preterites and supines; others in epigrams, rhymes, and verses use the old freedom, with Fescennine licence freely scourge their schoolfellows, and without mentioning names hurl abuse and fun at each other; with Socratic wit gird at the failings of their schoolfellows, or even of their elders, or bite them more deeply with the tooth of Theon, in audacious dithyrambics. The audience ready for laughter, wrinkle their noses as they redouble their shaking guffaws.'"

And, subsequently, of the contemporary games FitzStephen writes:

"London * for theatrical shows, for stage spectacles, upon which holy confessors have laboured, or for representations of the Passion, whereby the unwavering constancy of martyrdom is brightly illuminated. Moreover, on a day every year, we begin with the games of boys (for we were all boys once), when, on Carnilevaria (i.e., Shrove Tuesday) all the boys in each school bring their masters their game-cocks and fightingcocks, and all the forenoon is devoted to the boys' play, fighting cocks in their schools. After dinner, the whole youth of the city sally out into the fields to the popular game of ball. Each school has its own ball, and nearly all the holders of civic offices also provide one. The grown-up people, the fathers, and rich men of the city, come on horseback to look on at the struggles of the young, in their ways, grow young with the young; the motion of natural heat seems to be excited in them by looking on at so much motion, by sharing in the delight of the freedom of youths."

Thus, strolling forth into the fields, leaving the grey solemn cloister and the city walls behind them; inhaling the soft evening breeze blowing over the scented watermeadows which were garbed in all the green livery of summer-time; drinking the sweet, salubrious waters of the well-springs, or dreamily contemplating the trout darting in “runnels murmuring over the shining pebbles,' until such time as the compline-bells tolling across London's battlemented towers and gargoyled roofs, incar

As given in the reprint by Hearne, in his edition of Leland's Itinerary (from which the above has been translated), published 1769; but a mistake of the MS., according to the editor of the Rolls Series of English Chronicles.

nadined with the glory of the setting sun, would forewarn the dreamer of the imminent closing of the city gates, we get a vivid picture of the serenity and felicity of the life of the scholars of the Merrie England of the Middle Ages. No doubt the boys of the almonry school of Westminster would participate to the full in all the “joys" of cock-fighting in the schools, or of disputing on all the rubricity of the choral festival days. Nor need we imagine that there would be no veritably poor and needy" scholars among them; for the church of the Middle Ages was in some sort the bulwark of the people, although by the time of Wycliffe and John Ball she had, we know, lamentably fallen away from that attitude.

One, Widmore, also states that from the latter part of the reign of Edward III. till the dissolution of Westminster Monastery, a salary was paid to a schoolmaster, styled Magister scholarium pro eruditione puerorum grammaticorum" (i.e., schoolmaster for the instruction of grammar boys). This pedagogue was a distinct personage from him by whom the choir were taught to sing; and at the Reformation, when the Monastery of St. Peter was surrendered to the Crown, Henry VIII. included the school in his draft for the new establishment of the See of Westminster. The antiquarian-biographer, Anthony à Wood, says that, in the time of Edward IV., one Alexander Nowell," formerly of Brazen-Nose College, taught school at Westminster, where he zealously trained the youth in Protestant principles."

In accord with the experience of many other eleemosynary foundations, we find that before Henry's death, and during Mary's reign, the school languished unsupported, many of the revenues and endowments intended for its support being diverted in many dark ways and into divers obscure channels.

We may observe that in the old black letter folio of his Annales (edition 1631), John Stow has an illuminating word to say on the conversion of the church lands of West