In 1626, on a visit to his property at Simondstone, Aysgarth, Yorks, Edward Alleyn contracted a fatal illness, which ended in his death on November 25th, he being buried two days later in his chapel. During his lifetime he built ten almshouses for the poor of London town, and, after his death, his executors were enjoined to erect ten more in Cripplegate, at St. Botolph's, etc., and to bestow upon his college two valuable leases in Southwark, as an addition to its settled estates.

His last recorded act was to modify the statutes of his college, which shows that he very evidently did not intend an unalterable cast-iron institution (as lawyers and fossilised administrants subsequently made it), devoid of all elasticity for the enlargement of its sphere of utility.

Dulwich College also benefited by the will of Wm. Cartwright, an actor, who, in 1626, bequeathed to it a library and some portraits.

By the statutes of the college of God's Gift, the warden "was to provide a dinner for the college upon his election, and the poor, 47 in number, were to be admitted out of other parishes in case of deficiency in the parishes prescribed. The statutes to be read over 4 times a year.'

His will, dated November 13th, 1626 (in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury's Registry), devises to the college "his seal ring in his arms, to be worn by the college as oft as they need; also all his books, and instruments, with the pictures, hangings, and other furniture therein. And all the furniture in the twelve poor scholars' chambers, together with several parcels, and sets of household linnen, and other utensils, all the implements of husbandry, and two teams of horses and oxen."

A Latin inscription over the gate of the college informed the passer-by, according to the Biographica Britannica, vol. i. (ed. 1747), that Alleyn was keeper of James I.'s bear-garden. From that and from his own playhouses on Bankside, Southwark, he acquired £500 per annum (£6,000 modern equivalent value).

But, after his death, the liberal provisions of Alleyn's statutes for enlarging the basis of his foundation were, of course, set aside. For nearly 100 years after the foundation the endowment of the college continued to be £800 a year; in 1869 it amounted to £15,000 (with the prospect of a large and progressive increase), with £4,000 payable as life-pensions of some sort. Foundation scholars to be educated and maintained free of charge had not been seen at Dulwich College from the seventeenth century to 1870! In their stead, day-boys belonging to the privileged parishes were paying £6 and £8 per annum, and as for the eleemosynary branch for the "six poor brethren and six poor sisters," why that branch of the institution assisted no more than the number prescribed temporarily by the founder when the revenues were £800 yearly!

That it was the full intention of the founder to establish a great public school on the model of Westminster and St. Paul's, with provision for University training for poor boys, is clearly manifest in the statutes, but for more than 200 years the educational benefit of "God's Gift" college was restricted to the twelve nominally poor scholars. Successive actions at law resulted in the strange ruling of the judicial owls of the old Chancery tribunals that it was not within the competence even of the founder (!) to divert any portion of the revenues of his foundation to the use of others than the members as specified in the Letters Patent. Thus, in spite of the enormously increasing revenue of the college, the poor of the neighbourhood were very much worse off than before Alleyn conceived the idea of his philanthropic project.

Concerning "Master Allen, alias Alleyne, his bounty," says Stow," this said Founder told me that he intends also forthwith to build thrice twelve poore folkes lodgings in London, viz., twelve lodgings or roomes in three severall Parishes, and give unto every of them some maintenance: within two yeeres this house will be finished, and the poore in possession, and then there is more to be said of it. In the meane time thus much deserues thanks and memory."

It is of slight interest to note that this excerption, which is said to be by "Mr. Edward Howes," one of Alleyn's executors, ends "and so the founder told me."

Here, again, the hand of what Matthew Arnold called our "collective best self, the State," should have sternly intervened to redress the balance. To what obscure destination were the revenues of Dulwich Free School and Hospital diverted from the period subsequent to the founder's death (i.e., the early seventeenth century), until well on towards the close of the nineteenth century? We are not likely to be enlightened thereon, and in the meantime, surely, there could not well be a more damning indictment of the scandalous administration of any charity, educational or other, than that contained in the above few facts!

The truly Etonian way in which the teaching staff of this college regarded their duties a century ago is shown by a significant anecdote, which has been handed down, of orders given to have the college gate-posts kept freshly white-washed in order that a certain master might steer safely through when returning from dinner with his friends.

A full-length portrait of this famous Shakespearean actor is still preserved at Dulwich College, and, hanging on its walls, bodies him forth as a man of dignified presence. Probably the idea of the founding of Dulwich College was derived from the Charter-house, which Sutton had founded two years previously; at any rate, there are references in his (Alleyn's) papers, now at the college, to similar institutions, such as Eton, Winchester, and one at Amsterdam. By items in his diary from 1617-22, we see that the necessary Royal patent for the incorporation and endowment of his charity was not obtained without considerable difficulty. The man who was capable of "loving" only for an intellectual consideration (as the late Dr. Richard Garnett averred with insight and much critical acumen) had his eye on Alleyn's charitable trust, as well as upon the Charter-house. And in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham, Sir Francis Bacon, who was then in his heyday of

fortune as James's Lord Chancellor, strongly opposed the scheme, but not, it is said, upon the personal grounds of any hostility to Alleyn himself, who had wisely secured Buckingham's (James's all-powerful favourite's) support.

Bacon's letter, which is of some interest in view of the fact that immediately after Alleyn's death his intentions with regard to the really indigent beneficiaries of the educational side of the charitable trust were openly and flagrantly flouted, we have quoted from vol. vi., p. 324, of Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, by Spedding.

"A.D. 1618. April-December. Aetat 58. "To the Marquis of Buckingham.*

My very good Lord,

"I thank your Lordship for your last loving letter. I now write to give the King an account of a patent I have stayed at the Seal. It is of licence to give in mortmain eight hundred pound land, though it be of tenure in chief, to Allen that was the player, for an hospital.

"I like well that Allen playeth the last act of his life so well, but if his Majesty give way thus to amortize his tenures, his Courts of Wards shall decay, which I had well hoped should improve. But that which moved me chiefly is, that his Majesty now lately did absolutely deny Sir Henry Savile for £200 and Sir Edwin Sandys for £100 to the perpetuating of two lectures, the one in Oxford, the other in Cambridge, foundations of singular honour to his Majesty (the best learned of Kings), and of which there is great want; whereas hospitals abound, and beggars abound never a whit the less.

If his Majesty do like to pass the book at all; yet if he would be pleased to abridge the £800 to £500 and then give way to the other two books for the University, it were a princely work. And I would make an humble suit to the King and desire your Lordship to join in it that it mought be so. God ever preserve and prosper you.

"'Your Lordship's most obliged friend and faithful Servant, "FR. VERULAM. CANC.

York House this 18th of August, 1618.

I have written to my Lord Chamberlain being Chancellor of Oxford to help in the business.'

Stephens's First Collection, p. 233. From the original Second Collection, p. 83.

*

It may be noted that the Court of Wards was a court of records founded by an Act of Henry VIII. for the survey and management of the rights of the Crown over its wards. Known generally as the Court of Wards and Liveries, its province was to see that the King had the full profits of tenure arising from the custody of the heirs of his tenants, being infants or idiots; from licences and fines for the marriage of the "King's widows"; and from the sums paid for the livery of seisin (i.e., the act of putting a person in possession of a freehold estate by the ⚫ formal presentation of a document of transfer) charged on the heir of landed property. Used as an engine of oppression by James I. and Charles I., the statute 12 Car. II., ch. 24, abolished it along with other military tenures.

A contemporary exposition of Alleyn's intended application of his benefaction-Thomas Heywood's The Actors' Vindication-says

"So many (i.e., eminent players) dead, let me not forget that most worthy famous Mr. Edward Alleyn, who in his lifetime erected a college at Dulwich, for poor people, and for education of youth. When this college was finished, this famous man was so equally mingled with humility and charity, that he became his own Pensioner, humbly submitting himself to the proportion of diet and cloaths, which he had bestowed on others."

It was, then, in the intervals of such nobly democratic performances as the above that he, the said Bacon, must have written, or rather stenographed, in English “brick ” the plays of Shakespeare (more or less off his own bat); to say nothing of the Novum Organon and The New Atlantis in Latin "stone," the Anatomy of Melancholy, the works of Peele, Green, Marlowe, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, and probably all the prose or poetical works on the strength of which an Elizabethan author of any subsequent fame in the eye of posterity was canopied

* Vide Reeve's History of English Law; Stephen's Commentaries.