CHAPTER XIX SHREWSBURY SCHOOL TIPPING A FLUNKEY TO OBTAIN A FRee School-THOMAS ASHTON— SHREWSBURY SCHOOL ENDOWMENTS-CAMDEN ON THE SCHOOL-THE TREND OF THE TIMES-SCHOOL FASTI-A QUAINT BANQUET AND A QUEER AQUATIC CEREMONY JOHN STOW EXPOSES ARISTOCRATIC GRAFT"-JURISDICTION OF ST. JOHN'S College, Cambridge, over SHREWSBURY-POVERTY QUALIFICATION-INCOME AND SALARIES IN 1870-BAILIFFS' ORDINANCES OF 1577-CHANCERY SCHEME OF 1853DERELICTION OF CLARENDON COMMISSIONERS-A FEE SCHOOLALUMNI OF SHREWSBURY-A GOOD STORY-SHREWSBURY TO-DAY. MORE than three centuries have passed since, in the opening years of the English Renaissance and of the nascent new learning falling like golden rain upon the parched aridity of the intellect and art of Western Europe, the bailiffs and burgesses of Shrewsbury, headed by their chief townsmen, Richard Whyttaker and Hugh Edwards, and with the support of other dwellers in the county of Shropshire, gave an impetus to the movement for the establishment of a free school in their county town. Naturally, of course, after Henry VIII. and his courtiers had satisfied their insatiate lust for loot, the sequel to the dissolution of the monasteries here, as everywhere else in this happy realm of England, was found by the Salopians to be the entire disappearance of the educational and other endowments and of the schools and institutions attached to the Abbey and sister churches; so that it was imperative that the citizens, if they wished for any education at all, should incontinently come to the rescue of the local youth, victims of the "reforming" brigands. Thus, at Michaelmas, 1549, the corporation of Shrewsbury paid their recorder, one Reginald Corbett, for a supplication exhibited to my Lord Chancellor, "to obtain a Free School, IOS." Not content with that, they went one better, tipping my Lord Chancellor's lackey, " for his favour in the same, 20d." Subsequently, and not long after, they “paid for the purchasing of a Free School to be had within the town, 20l"—a sum equal to about £300 of modern money, and which is said to have been, in part, a consideration for the estates afterwards settled upon the school. Later, for the endowment of the projected school, they petitioned Edward VI. for a grant of some portion of the estates originally belonging to the dissolved collegiate churches. In compliance therewith, the King gave the appropriated tithes of several prebendal livings formerly belonging to the churches of St. Mary and St. Chad," for the purpose of endowing a school with one Master and one Under Schoolmaster, to be called The Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth." Although founded in 1551, the school was not actually opened till 1562, for during Mary's reign the charter had remained in abeyance. In the latter year, Thomas Ashton-" a right good man," according to the antiquary Camden-was appointed headmaster, and the school, "wherein " (to quote Camden's Britannia) "were more schollers in number when I first saw it than in any one schoole in England again," soon contained pupils from the families of the country gentry of Shropshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Worcestershire, and North Wales, as the entrance books show. The Elizabethan antiquary, William Camden, states in his monumental topographical-historical work, Britannia, that: Shrewsbury's inhabitants are partly English, partly Welsh they use both languages, and among other things greatly to their credit is the grammar school, one of the largest and best filled in all England, for the education of youth, whose flourishing state is owing to provision made by its first headmaster, Thomas Ashton, a person of great worth and integrity, who provided by his own industry a competent salary. The present school, a fair, stately stone building, erected and endowed by Queen Elizabeth hath one Master and three Under-masters; with a very good Library. The buildings and Library are not inferior to many colleges in the Universities: besides which there are very good houses for the Schoolmasters belonging to it. About four or five miles distant, at a place called Grinshill, there is another School-house, built of the same white stone, whither the Masters and Scholars may repair in case any contagious distemper, or other cause, should render it unsafe for them to stay in the town.” Significant enough of the trend of the times in the matter of class spoliation * is the following, occurring in a letter of Mr. Ashton's to the Corporation of Shrewsbury, dated February 20th, 1573: “For you see now how the poor are forced to give over their Learning and Study, for that they can have no place in neither University, in any colledge." The year 1573 would appear to have been a red-letter epoch in the annals of the Free School's fasti, for "at the cominge in of Sir Harry Sydney, Lord Presydent of Wales [of the Welsh Marches], from London, ther was shott off in a ryaltie [triumph] 18 chamber peces at a voyde place under the Wyld Copp, adjoyninge unto Master Sherrars howse, . . . and at the foot of the Wyld Copp, was an excellent oracion made unto him by one of the scollers of the Free Schoole; "-and " spente and geven to Mr Phillipe Siddney [then nineteen years of age, and afterwards the famous Sir Philip Sidney] at the cominge to this towne with my Lord P'sident his father, in wine, and cakes, and other things, 7s. 2d." A few years later, when the Lord President again visited Shrewsbury, he was treated to a quaint "bancket," present at which were "all the scollars of the sayd free scoole . . . being in number 360." "In some grammar schools . . . it is lamentable to see what briberie is used, for yer the scholer can be preferred, such bribage is made, that poore men's children are commonlie shut out, and the richer sort received (who in times past thought it dishonour to live as it were upon almes) and yet being placed most of them studie little other than histories, tables, dice and trifles, as men that make not the liuing by their studie the end of their purpose, which is a lamentable hearing." (Wm, Harrison's Description of England.) The Lord President departed by water about the 13th of the month, and he was made-for his sins, doubtlessthe victim of a ceremony which considerably perturbed and disorganised his solar plexus :— Their were placed in an ilet hard by the water syde serten appointed scollers of the free schoole, being apparelyd all in greene and greene wyllows upon their heads, marching by, and calling to hym, making theire lamentable orations, sorrowinge hys departure, the which was done so pitifully and of sutch excellency that truly it made many, both in the barge upon the water, as also the people uppon lande, to weepe, and my lord hymself to change countenance." Why, even in Ocean's green and crystal depths on the translucent floor of Neptune's halls was ne'er a sight like this to gladden the sea god's old eyes! One boy advanced and sang some quatrains of the species decidedly queer: Oh! stay the bardge, rowe not soe fast, "Theyre woe is greate, great moan they make; They howle, they crie, their leave to tacke (take); Then all the willow-crowned jackasses together bawled in chorus: And will your honour now depart? And must it needs be soe? Would God we could lyke fishes swyme That we might wyth thee goe. W Or else would God this littel ile Were stretched out so lardge That we on foot might follow thee, Enough; more of this stuff would be calculated to produce the megrims! Let us be serious, as Mr. Pecksniff did not say. |