CHAPTER XIII

ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL (continued)

AN ECHO OF ETON'S " 'DIVIDING SOCIETY "-SALARIES-NEPOTISM AND PATRONAGE-PEPPER WITH PRIVILEGES -FAMOUS SCHOLARS— NOT VERY VIOLENT ICONOCLASTS!—A LARGE UNAPPLIED SURPLUS INCOME THE LONDON LIVERY COMPANIES AND THE " EIGHTIES" ROYAL COMMission-StewARDSHIP OF The Mercers-Large DefaLCATIONS-REPOrt of BrougHAM'S COMMISSION-THE" MISSING THIRD " AND MUCH ELSE-THE" PESTIFEROUS Poor "-Wailing and GNASHING OF TEETH-DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LITELL DINNER " AND AN "APPOSITION Dinner "-PORTENTOUS Gold Medals for MeriTORIOUS BREASTS-ST. PAUL'S TO-DAY-OFFICIAL SCHOLArship ReguLATIONS FOR 1914-ARE PAULINE FOUNDATIONERS TO-DAY POOR BOYS ?— GOVERNING BODY IN 1914.

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Of the endowments held for the support of St. Paul's School there are houses, lands, rents, consols, and fines upon copyholds. The Mercers' Company administer the whole of this, and, in 1865, considered they were beneficially entitled to the surplus revenues. At once the £127,700 which the provost and fellows of Eton divided amongst themselves spring to the mind! In the same year it was stated that the income of St. Paul's amounted to £12,000 per annum, and that there was prospect of a large immediate increase. In the place of the high-master, sur-master, and chaplain of the original ordinances, there were, in the nineteenth century, seven masters.

The high-master's salary amounted to £900 per annum ; in addition he had, and possibly his present successor enjoys likewise, the rents of two houses at Stepney, a residence for himself contiguous to the school, with rates, taxes, and repairs found for him; and a master's gown every year. The other three classical masters, with incomes of £400, £320, and £300, had also residences, with free rates and taxes, and gowns yearly. The Clarendon Commissioners recommended that the "Head Master of

so large and important" a school remunerated. £1,800 with a house, or £2,000 without a house, would not be too much; and the Sur-Master should receive a considerable addition to his present emoluments." They state that every boy at St. Paul's received gratuitous education, but a splendid opportunity (this they did not say) for nepotism and favouritism was afforded by reason of the fact that, in rotation, each member of the Court of Assistants of the Mercers' Company nominated a scholar.

a school" should be liberally

Think of it, gentlemen, such men as the famous Duke of Marlborough; Archibald, Earl of Forfar; Charles, Duke of Manchester; the Master of the Rolls (Sir John Trevor), a former Speaker of the House of Commons; Spencer Compton (another Speaker); Sir Edmund Northey, Attorney-General; Sir Frederick Pollock, Lord Chief Baron (another legal luminary); Lord Chancellor Truro; the Bishop (Lee Prince) of Manchester; a host of patricians, lawyers, Privy Councillors, fossils, college heads, and many others of the glorious company of the bishops-all these as boys received gratuitous education, and often maintenance, out of the endowments of Colet's charitable foundation!

It is to be observed that Milton, Leland (the King's Antiquary), Camden (the well-known herald and antiquary), Pepys (the diarist), Halley (the celebrated astronomer), and Benjamin Jowett (the translator of Plato) were also alumni of St. Paul's.

For admission to the school the qualifications were simply that a boy should be able to read and write and not be under nine years. Even the Clarendon Commissioners found that "principles of exclusive patronage had been allowed to obstruct admission to a school which might and ought to become the first in London, and one of the first in Great Britain"; and they recommended Largely responsible," says Mr. Escott, for the brevity of the modern journalese," and also for the arid style of the Oxford “coldwater" school of “analytical historians.”

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"the abolition of the present system of nomination, and the substitution of a system of limited competition. When the school is removed from its present site we have recommended that the Foundation be thrown open to the unrestricted competition of boys between the ages of eleven and fifteen."

But the Commissioners were not very violent iconoclasts. Nowhere, after a diligent search, do we find them enjoining or recommending "poverty poverty" as a condition of assistance. Not to the "poverty" of £3,000 a year do we, of course, advert.

represents pretty

In the detailed statement of expenditure of the Mercers' Company for 1860 is the following financial item: "New 3 per cent. annuities, purchased of £2,684 IIS. 3d., stock at 93, and commission, £2,500." "This," 'This," say the Commissioners, nearly the excess of the ordinary annual revenue of the school over its ordinary expenditure; according to our evidence, rather less than more. We have it also in evidence that this surplus is increasing, and that it is likely at a not very distant period (1888) to rise to more than double its present amount. It also appears that for several years past a surplus has existed, and that the accumulations from this source amounted in 1860 to a sum of not less than £33,000, yielding at that time an income of upwards of £1,250. We are not told for how many years this process of accumulation has been going on, but even so long ago as 1835 the Corporation Commissioners were led to remark, that the present large and improving revenue, under a somewhat more economical system, would be adequate to the production of a far more extensive benefit than the mere instruction in classical learning of 153 scholars.'" Having regard to the appreciation of ground rents and the incremental value enormously augmented since then, of the land and surroundings in London, one may form a tolerably clear idea of the present wealth of this foundation.

G.E.S.

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Throughout the 'seventies and 'eighties the position of the London livery companies, including, of course, the Mercers' Company, was the subject of a great deal of more or less acrimonious discussion; two parties took up an aggressive attitude-one side anxious for drastic reforms in the London municipal organisation, and the other wishing to carry forward the process of inspection and partial revision of endowments, which had overtaken the universities, schools, and other charities. A Royal Commission was appointed in 1880, whose terms of reference were to enquire into all the livery companies, the circumstances and dates of their foundation, the objects for which they were founded, and how far those objects were being carried into effect. A valuable and informative Report and Appendix (4 vols., 1884), containing the Commission's findings, showed the property of or held in trust for the companies, its value, situation, and description. All but six made returns to the Commissioners, who estimated the annual income of the companies to be from £750,000 to £800,000, about £200,000 of which was trust income, the balance corporate stock.

According to Wm. Herbert's History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies (published at the Guildhall Library, London), the lands conveyed by Colet's grant of 1511 to the Mercers' Company for the endowment of St. Paul's consisted of 1,965 acres of arable, pasture, and meadow land and 30 acres of woodland, the annual rental of which the Mercers' books give as £55 14s. 101d. (£840 to-day). There were a rent charge of £8, a number of posthumous benefactions, tenements, cottages, messuages, standing on 75 acres of very valuable land in Aldgate Street, London. In 1517 the dean granted estates in Cambridgeshire, and in and near Colchester, Essex, for maintaining a chantry for one chaplain, together with a certain chapel at the south end of his school, shops, cellars, tenements, etc., a grammar school and chapel with four shops under it-all for continuing the school.

By comparison with terriers of the whole property, in 1575-76, Lord Brougham's Charity Commission found great differences between the then contents of the estates and their actual extent in the nineteenth century. Making ample allowances for topographical changes due to the passing centuries, and the alterations arising from Enclosure Acts and other causes, the Commissioners were yet compelled to say, in the case of the Buckinghamshire estates, that they could not account for "such large defalcations as have taken place."

And now let us give one item of the stewardship of the Mercers' Company, which had drawn upon their heads the mild strictures of Brougham's Commissioners-good, easy men as the latter were !

For example, in Aston Clinton the "defalcations amounted" to one third of the whole number of acres." Then we may well ask what had become of this missing "third"-had the members of the contemporary governing body opened a private banking account with it, or did the Charity Commissioners wink broadly and bespatter the whitewash, or, to vary the metaphor, forbear disturbing the pool of corruption lest the reek of a scandal might arise? At any rate, the Commissioners give us no clue as to the fate of the alienated missing" third.”

The rent of the Bucks estates totalled (1820) £1,746 13s. 5d. per annum, the Cambridgeshire and Essex estates (farms) let for £135 and £46 yearly, respectively.

How valuable the unearned increment of the land in London had become we may see in the fact that for the carrying of the Commercial Road through their property" the Mercers' Company had received £3,390 8s. 8d. In 1820, the whole rental of the Stepney (the "Stebonhith" of the dean's will) property was £1,494 IS. IId. per annum, and "is expected, when the leases fall in

* Terrier M.L. terrarius liber": A book or roll in which, by modern usage, the lands of private persons or corporations are described in extent, acres, and sites.