THE CASTLE.
On the site of the castle a Saxon fortress originally stood. In 1070 Roger de Montgomery built the castle by enlarging the fortress and demolishing fifty-one houses occupied by the burgesses. The destruction of this property was not accompanied by any diminution in the public taxes, and the burgesses complained of their grievance, but without effect. The Earl’s two sons, who succeeded him in possession of the castle, refused to redress their wrongs. In the reign of Henry I. it became the property of the Crown, and certain portions of land were parcelled out as positions of defence in the event of any necessity arising. A governor was appointed to command it, a constable to guard it, and a chamberlain to see that it was kept in good repair. It was usually held by the sheriff of the county to enable him the more powerfully to defend his bailwick. It was surrendered to the Parliamentary army in 1644, and General Mytton was made governor. He was succeeded by Humphrey Mackworth, who appointed as lieutenant of the castle Captain Hill. Hill is described as “a prodigal, drunken fellow, who before the war, was a barber in Shrewsbury.” He was disliked by both the people of the town and the garrison, and in order to depose him from his position, a conspiracy was formed. He was enticed to an alehouse outside the gates of the town. The gates were closed to prevent his return, his personal property was thrown over them, the town instantly was in an uproar, and he was compelled to fly for his life. In the fifteenth year of Charles II. the burgesses were ordered by a quo warranto to deliver up the castle to the king. The garrison then consisted of two companies. In the time of James II. all the cannon and match, with most of the muskets, were removed by royal command. Charles II. presented the Castle to Lord Newport, afterwards Earl Bradford. Lord Newport had given the sum of £600 to Charles I. Perhaps the gift of the Castle by the second Charles was his acknowledgment of Newport’s pecuniary service to that relative who had the misfortune to lose his head. The Duke of Cleveland is now the owner of the Castle.
On Castle Gates, opposite the Independent Chapel, stood the Outer Castle Gate, which was formerly strengthened and defended with towers, portcullis, and fosse in a line with a road leading to the Smithfield. That portion of the town wall which extends towards the river was erected by Robert de Belesme, second son of the founder of the castle. Camden says it was never assaulted except in the Barons’ wars. A few yards higher stood the Inner or Burgess Gate, at right angles with the Schools. The Castle Walk on the left of Castle Gates was formed in 1790, and was called the Dana from the name of the person who suggested its formation.
THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL,
which arrests the eye on Castle Gates, was founded by Edward VI., on the 18th of February, 1552, who named it the “Free Grammar School”—a title about the meaning of which there has been a good deal of philological disputation. On the south window is a Latin inscription, which runs as follows:—“At the supplication of Hugh Edwards and Richard Whittaker, King Edward the Sixth laid the foundation of a Shrewsbury School.” The supplication was induced by the fact that there was no public institution for the education of Salopian youth. This want was represented to the king in 1551 by Hugh Edwards, a mercer in London, and afterwards of the Shrewsbury college, and by Richard Whittaker, then bailiff of the town. They solicited for the maintenance of a Free Grammar School a considerable portion of the estates of the dissolved colleges of St. Mary and St. Chad. The king readily granted their request; and the tithes of Astley, Sansaw, Clive, Leaton and Almond Park, the property of St. Mary’s, with those of Frankwell, Betton, Woodcote, Horton, Bicton, Calcott, Shelton, Whitty, and Welbeck, belonging to St. Chad’s—the whole then valued at the handsome sum of £20 per annum—were given for the endowment of the school. Two masters were appointed by the bailiffs and burgesses who were nominated governors, and who, with the Bishop of Lichfield, were empowered to make statutes and ordinances. The appointment of head and second masters now rests with the Fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge.
The first master was the Rev. Thomas Ashton who is called by Camden “the excellent and worthie,” and who had “the best filled school in all England.” He had 290 scholars, among whom were some of the aristocracy of the county, heirs of the gentry of North Wales, and representatives of the greatest families of the kingdom. He laid the foundation of that brilliant fame which the school has always maintained. From a Latin inscription on the south window we learn that “at the instance of Thomas Ashton, a man pious, learned, and prudent, within these walls ever to be revered, Queen Elizabeth augmented this foundation.” She did so by adding to it on the 23rd of May, 1571, the entire rectory of Chirbury, with further tithes and estates in the parish of St. Mary. The tithes new produce about £3,000 per annum, a portion of which is paid in stipends to the clergy of St. Mary’s, Chirbury, Clive, and Astley parishes.
The School was originally a timber building, and the chapel, tower, and library were added to it in 1595. The chapel was consecrated on 18th of May, 1617, by Dr. John Overel, Bishop of Lichfield, and the sermon was preached by Dr. Samson Price, who, for his abhorrence of Popery, was named “The maule and scourge of heretics.” The wood building which contained the first schoolroom was taken down, and the present fine edifice of Grinshill stone erected in its place in 1627. In the centre is a gateway, adorned on each side with a Corinthian column, upon which stand statues of a scholar and a graduate, bare-headed, and in the costume of the period. The library contains a large and valuable collection of books and manuscripts. It was “increased more than double by the testamentary bequest of Dr. John Taylor,” a native of the town, educated at the School.
During the mastership of Ashton the School acquired and has since maintained the most brilliant renown. The roll of illustrious students is a lengthy one. Ashton had among his scholars George Sandys, the well-known traveller, whose works obtained great commendation from Dryden and Pope: Sir Henry Sydney, ambassador to France from the court of Edward VI., President of the Welsh Marches, and Lord Deputy of Ireland, which country, says Spenser and Sir John Davies, he governed with great wisdom, and proved himself, according to Sir R. Naunton in the Fragmenta Regalia, a “man of great parts:” Sir Fulk Greville, Lord Brooke, an ingenious writer, a friend of Queen Elizabeth, and a poet of repute in his day: Sir Phillip Sidney, the noble and chivalrous soldier and poet whose bravery at the battle of Zutphen is one of the illustrious incidents in our history, and whose exquisite mind is manifested in Arcadia the picturesque and in Defence of Poesie the enchanting. Those were Ashton’s scholars, and besides them there have been educated here Sir Thomas Jones, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., whose answer to the last monarch’s remark that he could soon have twelve judges of Sir Thomas’s opinion as to his dispensation of power, “Twelve judges you may possibly find, sire, but not twelve lawyers,” is well known: Dr. John Taylor, Canon Residentiary of St. Paul’s, Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln, and Archdeacon of Buckingham, a learned critic and philologist, who wrote a work entitled Elements of the Civil War, and published what were said to be excellent editions of Lysias, Demosthenes and Lycurgus: George Saville, Marquis of Halifax, of whose courageous opposition to the unconstitutional conduct of James II. Macaulay speaks, who, under that sovereign, was President of the Council, in the Convention Parliament was Speaker of the House of Lords, and under William and Mary was Lord Privy Seal: Edward Waring, the learned English mathematician and Lucasian Professor of mathematics at Cambridge in the middle of the last century: while among more recent celebrities there are Mr. Thomas Wright the antiquarian: Captain Richard Lloyd Edwards, an officer of the “brave and bold” six hundred who rode “into the jaws of death,” at Balaclava; and several Englishmen of note. May we not say that these are names of which we may justly boast? May we not, adopting Macaulay’s elegant eulogium on the famous students of Glasgow University, say that Shrewsbury School has sent forth men “whose talents and learning have not been wasted on selfish or ignoble objects, but have been employed to promote the physical and moral good of their species, to extend the empire of man over the material world, to defend the cause of civil and religious liberty against tyrants and bigots, and to defend the cause of virtue and order against the enemies of all divine and human laws.”
On the left of the Schools St. Nicholas’s Chapel was recently observable. It was the only one in existence of eight similar structures. It was erected by Roger de Montgomery for the use of those of his retainers who resided in the outer court of the Castle. At a subsequent period it was appropriated for the accommodation of the President and Council of the Marches of Wales. On the site has been erected a handsome structure by the English Presbyterians, who have retained its ancient name, calling it