St. Anthony’s Hospital and School

This hospital was so interesting an institution in itself, and the erection and career of its school have been so much misrepresented, that its history is worth telling at some length. Stow’s[[90]] account of this hospital is rather long but not very correct. It “was sometime a cell to St. Anthonies of Vienne. For I read that King Henry III. granted to the brotherhood of St. Anthony of Vienne, a place among the Jews, which was sometime their synagogue, and had been builded by them about the year 1231; but the Christians obtained of the King that it should be dedicated to our blessed Lady, and since, an hospital being there builded, was called St. Anthonies in London. It was founded in the parish of St. Bennett Fynke ‘for a mayster, two priestes, one scholemayster and 12 poore men.’” “Moreover, king Henry VI. in the twentieth of his reign gave unto John Carpenter, D.D., master of St. Anthonies Hospital and to his brethren and their successors for ever his manor of Ponington, with the appurtenances” and other property “towards the maintenance of 5 scholars in the University of Oxford to be brought up in the faculty of arts, after the rate of 10d. a week for every scholar, so that the said scholars before their going to Oxford, be first instructed in the rudiments of grammar at the College of Eton, founded by the same king. In the year 1474 Edward IV. granted to William Say, B.D., master of the hospital of St. Anthony’s to have priests, clerks, scholars, poor men, and brethren of the same, clerks or lay men, quoristers, proctors, messengers, servants in household and other things whatsoever, the like as the Prior and Convent of St. Anthony’s of Vienne. This Hospital was united, annexed and appropriated unto the Collegiate Church of St. George in Windsor about the year 1485. This goodly foundation, having a free school and almshouses for poor men, builded of hard stone, adjoining to the west end of the church, was of old time confirmed by Henry VI. in the year 1447.” Such is his account of the origin of the foundation. He then deals with its latter end. “One Johnson (a schoolmaster there) became a prebendary of Windsor and then by little and little followed the spoil of this hospital. He first dissolved the choir, conveyed the plate and ornaments, then the bells, and lastly put out the Almsmen from their houses, appointing them portions of 12d. a week to each (but now I hear of no such matter), their houses with other be now letten out for rent, and the Church is a preaching-place for the French nation. The school-house was commanded in the reign of Henry VI., and sithence also, above other; but now it is decayed and come to nothing, by taking from it what thereunto belonged.”

The Hospital was at first a cell of the Hospital of St. Anthony at Vienne, a hospital famous throughout the world. There is no mention of any local habitation of the brethren of St. Anthony in England before 1249. Then in a document at Windsor, dated 1253, a grant to the hospital of the earlier date is mentioned, when the Church of All Saints, Hereford, was bestowed upon it by Henry III., and in 1253 a letter from Pope Alexander IV. congratulates the same king on having granted to the Master and Brethren of St. Anthony’s “a place in London among the Jews.” For further on this subject see Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 268.

Later writers have for the most part followed Stow. Thus Mr. Lupton in his Life of Dean Colet repeats[[91]] the story that the original foundation included a schoolmaster; and says that Edward IV. “augmented it. The school continued into the reign of Elizabeth, the rest of the property was not left to wait for the inquisition of Henry VIII.,” and then repeats, as typical, Stow’s story of the plunder by Prebendary Johnson. Again, Dr. Sharpe says,[[92]] “The Hospital appears to have always supported a Schoolmaster from its foundation.”

As a matter of fact, the school was no part of the original foundation of the hospital, and only made its appearance when the main institution had undergone a complete revolution. The hospital existed for at least 100 years longer, and the school began at least 200 years later, and continued for nearly 100 years more than Stow leads us to believe. The life of the hospital lasted for as nearly as possible four centuries. It began about 1249; it ended in 1666. For the first 150 years of its existence it was in tutelage to a foreign and monastic parent. A brief period of independence followed under native English clerical (not monastic) rulers, for some three-quarters of a century; and the era of its complete and formal release from tutelage was signalised by the foundation of the Grammar School in it, which enjoyed the highest reputation for about 100 years. The institution was then again placed under an external master. But the school continued to flourish, and, instead of being destroyed in the reign of Elizabeth, lasted into the reign of Charles II., under whom both school and hospital perished, never to be revived, in the Great Fire of London.

In 1434 John Carpenter became master or warden of the hospital, and he must be regarded as the second founder of the hospital and the actual founder of its school. He was a very considerable person in his day, being a great promoter of education and supporter of the secular clergy as against the regulars, the monks, black canons, and friars. His fine tomb, restored out of all antiquity by the ill-directed gratitude of Oriel College, is still to be seen in the ancient collegiate church of Westbury-on-Trym near Bristol. He was anxious to establish the secular canons of that church as his episcopal chapter instead of, or at least in addition to, the monks of Worcester. Indeed he actually called himself Bishop of Westbury and Worcester. He became Provost of Oriel in 1425, and Master of the hospital at least seven years later.

Carpenter was mixed up with the foundation of Eton as well as with that of St. Anthony’s School. When he was made Bishop of Worcester, he was consecrated in the collegiate church of Eton, and it was as a trustee of Eton and Oriel, and only nominally in his capacity as Master of St. Anthony’s, that the grants, mentioned by Stow,[[93]] of the manor of Ponington, and quit-rents from several places in Hampshire, were made to him and the brethren of the hospital. What became of this grant it seems impossible to find out. No mention of it occurs in the accounts of the hospital, nor do the authorities of St. George’s, Windsor, Eton, or Oriel know anything of the property. Probably it was one of the Lancastrian grants for the benefit of Eton on which Edward IV.’s Act of Resumption operated, and so passed away from Eton and Oriel for ever.

In 1441 the revolution in the constitution of the hospital was consummated. A Bull of Pope Eugenius IV. released the brethren of the hospital from the obligation to use a common dormitory and refectory, which by the Augustinian rule they were bound to use (though it is stated that there was no such dormitory or refectory), and enabled the clerks who served it to live in any decent place, until a dormitory and refectory were provided—a politic way of completely authorising its conversion into a house of seculars. At the same time, by the licence of Robert (Gilbert), Bishop of London, the church of St. Benet Finck was entirely appropriated to the hospital, and converted from a rectory into a vicarage. This was in order that the revenues of the rectory, worth sixteen marks a year, might be applied to the maintenance of “a master or fit Informer in the faculty of grammar,” “to keep a grammar school (regere scolas gramaticales) in the precinct of the hospital or some fit house close by, to teach, instruct, and inform gratis all boys and others whatsoever wishing to learn and become scholars (scolatizare).”

Its foundation was only one of a long series of school foundations which marked the period of the reign of Henry VI., who, far more than Edward VI., is entitled to the credit of being the patron king of school-boys. Eton, Newport, Shropshire, Newland, Wye (now the Wye Agricultural College, Kent), Alnwick, Towcester, are some among the grammar schools still existing which were founded in the ten years 1440-50; while there were many more which are no longer existing or have been degraded into elementary schools, or converted into exhibition funds. The movement was the first breath of the Renaissance stirring the dry bones of the schools. It was the outcome of a beginning of reaction against the excessive cult of scholastic logic, and a desire to return to the humanities of the “artists” as opposed to the sophistry of the theologians. Considering the conspicuous part taken in the new movement by men like Beckington, Waynflete, and Say, all Wykehamists, we may attribute a considerable share of it at least to the influence of Wykeham’s foundation at Winchester.

The most striking manifestation of the new spirit is seen in the Letters Patent granted in 1439, giving leave to William Byngham, rector of St. John Zachary in London, to found the College of God’s House in Cambridge, at first an annex to Clare Hall, and afterwards incorporated with Christ’s College. In his petition for the licence Bingham said that he had found all over the country grammar schools, formerly flourishing, now fallen into abeyance for lack of proper teachers. He therefore asked for leave to found a college of a master and twenty-four scholars for the training of Grammar schoolmasters, who were to issue thence to teach school all over the country. This, then, is the first Training College on record. In its statutes the importance of the classics was insisted on, not merely, as in the days of Wykeham and the foundation of Winchester, because grammar was the key which unlocked the Holy Scriptures, and was the gate to the liberal sciences “and theology, the mistress of all,” but because “it was necessary in dealing with law and other difficult matters of State and also the means of mutual communication and conversation between us and strangers and foreigners.” Here spoke the citizen of London and the man of the modern world. In much the same way Waynflete, himself ex-Headmaster of Winchester and first Headmaster of Eton, in his foundation of Magdalen College School, carried on by him from 1448 though not finally endowed and settled till 1480, provided by his statutes for the demyes being trained in grammar “that they might go out and teach others,” and he particularly ordered that they were not prematurely to be made sophisters.[[94]]

In 1443 Walter Lyhert, who succeeded Carpenter on his promotion to the See of Worcester, in the provostship of Oriel, also succeeded him as Warden (Custos), as he was now called, of St. Anthony’s. He in turn became a bishop, being promoted to Norwich in 1445. He was succeeded in the Mastership of St. Anthony’s by William Say, a Wykehamist of some fame, afterwards Dean of St. Paul’s. Under his rule the new constitution was completed. By Bull of January 28, 1446, the Pope granted, on the request of Henry VI. as patron, power to make new statutes for the hospital and its inmates to the Bishop of Worcester (Carpenter), the Bishop of Norwich (Lyhert), William Waynflete, then Provost of Eton, and William Say, then master of the hospital. The school, like that of Eton, was thus inaugurated on the model and under the guidance of members of the College of William of Wykeham, which Henry VI. dearly loved and deeply studied, and to which he paid the sincere homage of exact imitation. The statutes made by Carpenter and the rest are not forthcoming, but considering the auspices under which they were made, we may safely conclude that they followed their model as closely as did those of Eton, so far as what was presumably mainly a day-school could follow the statutes of what was mainly a boarding-school. There are indeed not wanting minor indications that some scholars at least boarded in the hospital. We know at all events that in two things in which Eton departed from the Winchester model, St. Anthony’s followed suit, namely, the raising of the stipend of the master from £10 to £16, and the direction that the school should be a free school to all who chose to come. We also know that, as at Winchester and Eton, a singing master was established and a Song School; for in 1440, David Fythian, who was rector of St. Bennet Finck, and John Grene, clerks, at the request of John Carpenter (and we may be sure at his expense and in consideration of a payment by him) had granted a rent of ten marks issuing out of “the Cowpe on the Hoope” in All Saints parish, London Wall, with power of distraint on it and another brew-house called the Dolphin and a tavern called the Bell in Southwark, to pay “John Bennet of London, clerk, yearly 8 marks, and 4 yards of new cloth of gentlemens’ suit” for teaching singing “to the boys, who are and shall be in the church of the said hospital.” This meant, of course, the choristers. In 1449 the brewery called the Cup on the Hoop was definitely devised by will, which, when enrolled in the Hustings Court, at once operated as a conveyance and dispensed with the necessity of a licence in mortmain, to William Say, then Master, and the Brethren of St. Anthony’s, “for maintenance of a clerk to teach assiduously all the boys of the house chanting with the organ (cantico organico) and plain song,” but while John Benatt (sic) remained, the Master was not bound to find another teacher. The hospital was to enjoy the residue after providing for the Song schoolmaster.

There is a series of documents connected with the hospital, the exact purport of which it is a little difficult to make out, but they seem to suggest some intention on the part of John Carpenter to benefit alike St. Anthony’s School and Oriel College, Oxford, by exhibitions at the university; bringing the school, though in a much modified degree, into the same sort of relationship with that college which Winchester bore to New College, or Eton to King’s, or Westminster afterwards to Christ Church and Trinity, Cambridge.

Oriel College,[[95]] Oxford, possesses a conveyance, June 27, 1424, to John Carpenter and Henry Sampson, both fellows and afterwards provosts, and others of land at Dagenham in Essex. Nine years later, the manor or manors of Valence Gallants and lands at Frystelings and Copped Hall were conveyed to a similar body of feoffees. In 1442 the manor of Easthall was acquired. By deed of June 27, 1447, all these properties were conveyed to Carpenter and Sampson, and in 1451 by Carpenter, then Bishop of Worcester, to Oriel College, on condition of their granting them to St. Anthony’s, reserving a pension “for the exhibition of certain poor scholars in St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford,” a dependency of the College. By deed of 14th November in the same year, the college granted the lands to the hospital, reserving a rent-charge of twenty-five marks, and by deed of 20th November,[[96]] William Say, “Master or Warden of the house or hospital of St. Anthony and the brethren of the same” granted an annual rent of £20 to the Provost and fellows “of the Royal College, commonly called Oreall,” payable in St. Mary’s Church, Oxford, “for the exhibition and maintenance of scholars to study there according to the form and effect of certain provisions or ordinances to be made by John, Bishop of Worcester.” By another deed of the same day, the Bishop, John Carpenter, declared the conditions of the exhibitions, but, alas! only in general terms; and whether any ordinances were actually made by Carpenter, and if so, what has become of them, is unknown.

When the exhibitions were established seems rather obscure. The earliest extant accounts, now at Windsor, of the hospital are for 1478-79 and 1494-95, and contain no mention of the Essex property or of scholars at Oxford. But in 1501-2, the rental includes the manors of Valence and Easthall and lands called Frystelyng’s lands in Essex let for £13 a year; and among the expenses is the item “The skolers of Oxford stypents, £10 : 18s.” The first entry in the Oriel College accounts of any money received for scholars is December 6, 1504, when, £10 : 6 : 8 was received by the College “for Mr. Tretyng” and paid over to him. In 1521-22, the St. Anthony’s account, which is for expenses only, includes “for the exhibicion of the scolers of Oxford in Seynt Mary Haule £10 : 7s.” St. Mary’s Hall was originally the rectory house of St. Mary’s Church, which was appropriated to Oriel College, who still appoint the vicar; and was probably the original home of the college and always remained a dependency of it.

Hardly had the hospital and school thus been put upon a sound basis than the Wars of the Roses substituted the Yorkists for the Lancastrians on the throne. The Yorkist accession and the Restoration of Charles II. are the only epochs in English history since the Norman Conquest in which the successful party have not been content with the enjoyment of power and the prospect of having things all their own way for the future, but have set themselves more Gallico to destroy the good deeds of the opposite party and root out their remembrance, if possible, from the land. All the foundations of Henry VI. were threatened with destruction. For the purpose apparently of proving himself the true heir of the Plantagenet Edwards, Edward IV. professed the most extreme devotion to the collegiate church of Windsor. He showed his devotion in the vicarious way common in those days, by endowing it with the plunder of other places. An Act of Parliament on Edward’s accession in 1460 declared all the grants of the three Lancastrian Henries void. Part of the possessions of Eton was granted to other places; while the whole institution was by a Bull of Union in November 1463 annexed to St. George’s, Windsor. Whether, as has been represented,[[97]] it was intended that the school should cease to exist, is very doubtful. When St. James’s Hospital, Westminster, was granted to Eton itself as St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Oxford, had been to Oriel College, and St. Julian’s Hospital, Southampton, to Queen’s College, Oxford, those colleges only took the net surplus after keeping up the hospitals. Windsor in like manner was probably only intended to get the surplus after keeping up Eton school. However, the Bull was strongly opposed by William Westbury, the provost and ex-headmaster. In 1467 a large part of the Eton estates was restored to it, and in 1470 King Edward IV. himself asked for the revocation of the Bull of Union and obtained a commission from the Pope for the purpose, and a final decree revoking it was pronounced by Cardinal-Archbishop Bouchier on August 30, 1476. It was, one can hardly doubt, by way of compensation to Windsor for the loss of Eton College that St. Anthony’s Hospital was, in 1475, annexed and appropriated to it in the same way as Eton had been. The terms of the annexation were absolute.[[98]] The King granted to “the Warden of Dean of the College of the Blessed Mary, St. George and Edward the Confessor in his castle of Windsor and to the chapter of the same college the Wardenship, advowson, parsonage, donation, collation, presentation, and free bestowal of the house, hospital or free chapel of St. Anthony, London, by whatever name it might be called, and the house hospital, or free chapel itself, with all its liberties, franchises, privileges, immunities, lands, tenements, rents, services,” etc., etc., belonging thereto, “to hold in pure and perpetual alms to their own use whenever it next became vacant by death, resignation, or otherwise”; and with power to take possession without any further process. On June 2, 1475, Dean and Chapter appointed Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, and others their attorneys to take possession of the hospital, they having got Peter Courtney, then master of the hospital, to resign in consideration of a pension of 100 marks or £66 : 13 : 4 a year. As in 1478 he became himself Dean of Windsor, he did not suffer much by the transaction.

Nor, indeed, did the hospital or school, which went on for at least 200 years more. Absolute as the terms of annexation were they seem to have been interpreted not as an abolition of the hospital, but only as a transfer to the dean and chapter of the right to the surplus, formerly taken by the master for his own use, estimated in the pension arrangement at 100 marks.

This comes out clearly in one of the earliest Account Rolls of the hospital after the transfer, which is fortunately preserved at Windsor, and gives an exact picture of the way the hospital was managed. It is for the year 1478-79 when David Hopton, Canon of Windsor, acted as Master of the hospital. The total income was the very large sum of £539 : 19s. or about £10,800 a year of our money. Of this only £18 : 2 : 4 was derived from rents or property, and that rental was subject to outgoings in the way of quit-rents of £7 : 6 : 8 and repairs to the extent of £9 : 5s.; so that the endowment was really a minus quantity.

The whole of the rest of the revenue was derived from voluntary subscriptions, which are called in the accounts “procurations,” being collected by procurators or proctors, exactly on the same principle that collections on Church Briefs were made after the Reformation. Indeed these and other like accounts make it clear[[99]] that the system of Church Briefs,[[100]] only abolished in 1828, was not of post-Reformation origin, but was extremely ancient. The right of collecting in a particular district was farmed out to different people who paid a fixed rent for the privilege for a term of years, and pocketed in return for the expenditure of their time and trouble whatever they managed to extract from the pockets of the faithful beyond the stipulated rent. Some specimens of St. Anthony’s Hospital leases to these farmers are preserved. There is one for the year 1479. It’s an Indenture made between the Dean or Warden of St. George’s College, the Master of St. Anthony’s, London, or in England, and the Canons of Windsor of the one part, and Thomas Morton of Worcester of the other part. In the same form as in a lease of land the Dean and Canons transfer, grant, and let to the aforesaid Thomas “all goods, profits, and commodities for any reason given, or to be given, assigned, or to be assigned, bequeathed, or to be bequeathed to and for the Hospital of St. Anthony in and throughout the whole bishopric of Hereford and archdeaconry of Oxford in places exempt [from the ordinary’s authority] as well as not exempt; with all pigs and other animals in the places aforesaid”; and constitute the said Thomas their lawful proctor and receiver in the premises, with full power of appointing substitutes, and without rendering any account. The term was ten years and the rent reserved £30 a year, payable in two half-yearly payments at Michaelmas and St. Philip and St. James’s Day. If the rent was in arrear the Dean and Canons were at liberty to dismiss the said Thomas and appoint another proctor in his place. The total rents of the Hospital shown in the account for 1478-79 derived in this fashion were:

Bishoprics of Salisbury and Ely, and archdeaconries of Lincoln, Stow, Huntingdon, and Leicester, and Deanery of Rutland (3 proctors in one lease)£128134
Archdeaconries of Northampton, Bedford, Bucks, and the jurisdiction of St. Alban’s (1 proctor)4000
Bishoprics of Exeter and Bath and Wells (3 proctors)4400
Bishopric of Rochester, and Deaneries of Shoreham and Croydon, with church of Criff400[[101]]
Archdeaconries of Derby, Stafford, Coventry, and Shrewsbury (2 proctors)2200
Archdeaconries of Chester and Lancaster1100
Bishopric of London2200
Bishopric of Winchester26100
Bishopric of Chichester800[[102]]
Province of York and Isle of Man (2 proctors)76134[[103]]
Bishopric of Winchester28134
Bishopric of Hereford and Archdeaconry of Oxford2968[[104]]
Archdeaconry of Canterbury26134
Bishopric of Norwich4400
Bishoprics of St. David’s and Llandaff800[[105]]
Bishoprics of Bangor and Asaph4168
£523168

The rentals are interesting as showing approximately the relative wealth and population of the various districts of England at the time. The superior wealth of the south over the north and the eastern over the western parts stands out clearly. The total receipts, equal in value to over £10,000 a year of our money, show an astounding liberality on the part of the givers of the voluntary donations and subscriptions by which the Hospital was maintained.

The expenditure is only given under a few different headings in gross, the reader being referred for details to a “paper book” which is not forthcoming. The wages of ministers, “priests, clerks, other ministers and servants” came to £45 : 12 : 8; the “robes of the said priests, clerks, scholars, poor, and other ministers and servants” cost £10 : 13 : 9. Bread made by Hobald, a baker of London, £21 : 18 : 7; beer bought from divers brewers at 1-1/2d. and 1d. a gallon, £35 : 11 : 8; other purchases (cati) £70 : 14s. “Foreign” expenses totalled £40 : 5 : 11-1/2d. The Sacrist of the Chapel received £4 : 0 : 9 for general expenses; a general obit, 8s. 8d., and Thomas Sainge’s obit, 6s. 8d. The clothes of the poor of the Hospital consisted of ten shirts and eight pairs of drawers of fustian at 3-1/2d. a yard; ten pairs of shoes at 2s. 5d. each; and ten pairs of stockings (caligis) of wool at 8d. a yard, and cost 19s. 11-1/2d. A new vestry at All Saints’, Hereford, was erected for £10 : 17 : 11. Repairs on the Hospital and the Swan next door came to £82 : 12 : 2-1/2d. So that the “arrears” (arregaia, meaning in mediæval accounts, not money due, but the clear surplus), amounting to £98, were handed over to the Treasurer of St. George’s, Windsor, “for the wages of 7 clerks and 7 choristers there.” In this amount, unfortunately, the salaries of the schoolmasters are not given separately, nor the number of “the children” or boys attending the school. Indeed, beyond the bare fact of its existence we know little of the history of St. Anthony’s School up to this time. It comes to light incidentally in a letter[[106]] from William Selling, Prior of Canterbury, to Thomas Bourchier, Cardinal-Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1472. “Please it your good fatherhood to have in knowledge that, according to your commandment, I have provided for a Schoolmaster for your ‘Gramerscole’ in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught grammar at Winchester and St. Anthony’s in London, that as I trust to God shall so guide him that it shall be worship and pleasure to your lordship and profit and increase to them that he shall have in governance.” As Archbishop Bourchier’s own nephew, the heir to the earldom of Essex, was a commoner at Winchester College,[[107]] this reference to the master of St, Anthony’s as having been also a master at Winchester, probably usher or second master there, shows that St. Anthony’s School already stood high in reputation.

There is a much more detailed account than that above given in English for the year 10 Henry VII., 1494-95, which gives the expenses of the Hospital for the Michaelmas quarter, day by day, being in fact one of the “paper books” referred to in the Latin account. It is extremely interesting by reason of its details, telling us exactly what the Master and “the Hall,” i.e. clergy and schoolmaster on the one hand, and “the Hospital,” i.e. almsfolk and “children,” had for dinner every day. The account begins on Michaelmas Day, when two of the traditional geese[[108]] were given to the Hall “at dener” at a cost of 18d., while “the Hospital and chyldryn” were put off with two loins of veal at 8d. The Master, a Canon of Windsor, is the only one who is debited with anything for breakfast, but that was a substantial one, consisting of a neck of mutton and chicken. The others presumably only had the commons of bread and beer. At “soper,” “the Hall” enjoyed ten chickens for 15d, while “the Hospital and children” had two quarters of mutton for 7d., with a halfpenny for “erbis,” or vegetables, and 5d. for “potage fleich”; the day’s diet cost 4s. 9d. Next day all fared well with seven ribs of roast beef and stewed veal at dinner; and three-quarters of mutton at supper. The 1st of October there was “potage fleich” and loins of mutton for dinner; mutton and two “coneys” or rabbits for supper. On the 2nd of the month there was again “pottage flesh,” and pork for dinner, “for all the house”; ten chickens for supper for “the Hall”; mutton for the rest. Friday, October 3, though it was the feast of the dedication of the church, was no-flesh day. There was a “sewe” for 4d.; twenty plaice for all the house, twenty small pike, a quarter and a half of roach, and fresh herrings. The total cost was 9s. 5-1/2d. Presumably there were strangers. Saturday was again a no-flesh day. There was milk, 3d., and butter, 7d., for dinner, in the form of frumenty probably; salt salmon for “the Hall” and stockfish for “the Hospital” at dinner; five barbels for “the Hall,” and 100 eggs for “all the house” at supper, while the Master had, all to himself, oysters at 1d.

The next week began with “half a beeff to lay in powdyr for the weke, 6s. 8d.,” while the Sunday dinner consisted of roast pork for dinner and mutton for supper. Pork, veal, beef, and mutton, varied with conies and soup, and for “the Hall” chickens; meat twice a day, and never the same at dinner and supper, show that our ancestors lived on a very much more generous and wholesomely varied diet than is commonly supposed. The two fast days only represented a pleasing change of diet: “Lamprons” or lampreys “for sew,” bream, fresh herrings and salt salmon on Friday; milk and butter “for dinner,” haddocks and whitings, 100 eggs on Saturday, were really not unsatisfying. The varieties of the fish menu were very extensive; it comprised sturgeon, cod, stockfish, fresh salmon, haddock, halibut, roach with shrimps (for sauce apparently), trout, carp, turbot, plaice, mackerel, thornbacks, gudgeons, guinards, flounders, smelts, sprats, mussels, crayfish, crabs, lobsters, eels, and conger eels, besides those already mentioned. On All Saints’ Day, which fell on a non-fast day, there was a warden-pie for all the house, the wardens, or pears, which cost 6d., while the flour cost 7d., and the “serypp” or sirop, 4d. On St. Nicholas’ Day, December 6, there was “fruit for them that ete no fish,” and 2 lb. of almonds. Among birds, besides cocks and fowls, geese frequently appear, with mallards, plovers, woodcocks, and larks, the latter for the Master’s table only. Beer as usual flowed in streams. The “good man” of the Swan—the brewery next door belonging to the Hospital—supplied for one quarter eighteen barrels of “threehalpenny ale,” and ten barrels of penny ale (a penny a gallon), while another brewer at the Checker supplied fifteen barrels of 1-1/2d., and ten barrels of 1d. beer. Beer, of course, served for breakfast and tea as well as dinner and supper. Still the quantity used was enormous. At St. Cross Hospital, Winchester, every poor man had a gallon a day, and at St. Anthony’s the provision must have been on the same scale. Wine was only drunk at the Master’s table, and that only on feast days.

On Christmas Day everybody had mutton for breakfast. There was a filet of pork for “force gruel,” six geese and fourteen fowls for all the house at dinner, while “the Hall” had eight conies besides. There were eight plovers, six cocks, and three dozen larks for the Master’s dinner and supper; and mallards or wild duck for “the Hall,” at supper; a gallon of cream for the Master’s custard, a gallon of milk for curd. Two and a half gallons of red wine and “claryet” were drunk. There was dessert: 4 lb. of “raysons” and currants at 5d.; 2 lb. of great raisins, 2d.; 4 lb. prunes, 8d.; ½ lb. ginger, 10d.; 3 lb. dates, 7-1/2d.; 1 quarter of cloves and mace, 8d.; ½ lb. “saundre,” 7d.; ½ oz. saffron, 8d.; comfits, “counfeits,” 1 lb., 5d.; 4 lb. of almonds, 8d. On Boxing Day, the Hall had a “pottle of Malmsey to their brawn, 6d.,” and another gallon and half of wine. On New Year’s Day the Master had, among other things, half a lamb; curd for tart, and oranges, which, with butter, cost 2d. On Twelfth Day, the Epiphany, the whole house enjoyed mutton and frumenty, made of milk and wheat, for breakfast. Dinner included four fillets of pork in mortrews, bake-meats and tarts. But the great event was a “wassayle.” To this there went 3 gallons of red wine at 2s.; 3 lb. sugar, 12s.; 2 gallons of “strok” (what was that?); a curd, powder of cinnamon, ginger and other spices, and pears. It was a mighty brew, and must have been almost as trying as a Winchester “egg-flip” on Founder’s Commemoration.

The staff of the Hospital (besides the Master, who was one of the Canons appointed for a year, who only resided at intervals) consisted first and foremost of “Master Nicholas,” the Grammar schoolmaster, at 50s. a quarter, or £10 a year—being at the same rate of pay as that of the headmasters of Winchester and Eton. Then there were four priests, of whom the senior, Sir John Galaway, received £4 : 13 : 4 a year, as against £5 a year given to a Fellow of Winchester for performing much the same functions, while the three others got £4 a year. A clerk (not called Sir), John Marche, “Maister of the children of the Song-School,” also got £4 a year. Then came six clerkes at £2 : 13 : 4 a year each. The poor usher, or “oysshur,” of the Grammar School only got 6s. 8d. a quarter, or £1 : 6 : 8 a year, a sad contrast to the £6 : 13 : 4 of the usher of Winchester College. It was less than the wages of the cook of St. Anthony’s, who got £2 a year, and the same as those of the butler or buttery man. Even his name is not given. Probably the explanation is that John Goreham, one of the priests, or one of the clerks acted also as usher. Of course, as was the case at Winchester and Eton, and all the College and Hospital schools, these salaries were in addition to board, lodging, and “liveries,” or broad cloth for their gowns.

In the next extant account, 17 Henry VII., 1502-3, Mr. David was “skolemaister,” but received only 20s. a quarter, the same as R. Hall “the maister of Queresters”—a term which the Wykehamist will recognise as a living word. It looks as if this reduction of the schoolmaster’s salary was due to greed on the part of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, who wished to have a larger surplus to put in their own pockets. Rogers was the usher, and received 6s. 8d. The livery of the schoolmaster and priests consisted of 4 yards of cloth at 3s. 4d. a yard, while that of the “clerks,” including the Master of the children, was only 3¼ yards, and the usher’s livery was the same as that of the clerks, sexton, and butler, 3 yards at 3s. The 12 “chylder” had 2½ yards at 2s. 4d. It is a little difficult to understand who the twelve children were. In a subsequent account for Michaelmas to Christmas 1521, twelve whose names are given had cloth for gowns; but then comes a heading “For the chylthern of the Songe Scole,” under which six only out of the twelve received hose and shoes, and had them repaired as well. Are the other six to be regarded as scholars in the Grammar School, or, as is perhaps more probable, choristers on probation?

The next extant account is for 1521-22, when Mr. Ball was the schoolmaster and Richard-a-Lee the Song schoolmaster. The latter was succeeded in 1522 by William Johnson, who, although he got £5 a year as against the Grammar schoolmasters’ £4, was still reckoned on a lower grade among the clerks, while the schoolmaster was always ranked with the priests. There had apparently been a considerable curtailment in expenditure as the surplus handed over to Windsor this year was no less than £210, or more than double the sum they derived from it in their first year.

The next schoolmaster whose name is known was Edmund Johnson. This was the “one Johnson,” of Stow’s account of “the spoil of the Hospital,” which is nothing more than a baseless libel. Edmund Johnson, or Jonson, was admitted a scholar of Winchester, at the age of eleven, in 1514, and became a Fellow of New College in 1522, remaining such for two years, and is described in the New College Register as having become “a schoolmaster.” Whether he was appointed to St. Anthony’s then, there are no means of knowing. Edmund Johnson was a “clerk” in the Hospital in 1522, and perhaps acted as usher, as no usher’s name is given. He can hardly be the same man. At all events he is described as “Scolemaster of the Grammar Schole in the said Hospitall” in a lease of November 16, 35 Henry VIII., i.e. 1543, by the Dean and Chapter to him of a house fronting “Saint Anthonies yarde,” being, perhaps, the house which had been usually occupied by the Master of the Hospital. The lease contained a reservation “for the use of the Scolemaister for the time then being,” of “the scolle house and the rome over yt, with the chambre next adioyning to the same schole.”

In 1546, the first of the Acts for the dissolution of colleges and chantries was passed, and commissioners were appointed under it to certify the chantries and their value. They included St. Anthony’s Hospital under the heading of Berkshire, it being treated as part of Windsor in that county.[[109]] They reported, on the authority of “Sir Anthonye Baker, clerk, Master of the Hospital,” that in the parish of St. Benedict Fink, London, was “one hospytall of St. Anthony, founded to fynde one master, 2 prestes, one scolemaster, and 12 pore men there, perpetually to serve and saye the devyne service and to praye for the soules of there founders.” This is the statement which misled Stow and the other historians into thinking that the school was part of the original foundation. The correct description of the foundation of Henry VI.’s time was misread as a description of the original foundation under Henry III., to which it was wholly inapplicable.

The value of the lands and possessions of the Hospital is put in the chantry certificate at £55 : 6 : 8 gross, with deductions of £4 : 1s., bringing it down to £51 : 5 : 8. The stipends of the two priests were £8 each; of the curate of Seynt Benet Fynkes, £8; and of “the clerk that keepeth our Lady’s mass,” £9. These four make up the four priests we find in the Hospital accounts. The steward received £5, while the poor cost £31 : 17s.; the “sexten” had £2. The schoolmaster’s stipend was £16; so that so far from the school being plundered at this time, the Master was far better paid than several of his predecessors, and received more than the Masters of Winchester or Eton.

The total expenses came to £95 odd. “And so lacketh for the proportion of the same house £40 : 11 : 11, which ys borne by the Dean and Cannons of Wyndsore, whereunto this Hospytalle is annexede [and] unytide.” This is a somewhat slim way of putting the fact that the surplus expenses of the Hospital were met by subscriptions from the public to such an amount, that instead of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor defraying the deficit out of their own revenues, a sum three or four times as large as the whole revenue from endowment of the Hospital found its way into their pockets.

The Chantries Dissolution Act of Henry was only permissive, giving the King, during his life, power to take possession of any chantries or colleges he chose; and advantage was taken of it to enter on barely half a dozen colleges, of which Windsor was not one. In 1547, a new Act of dissolution of colleges and chantries was passed in Edward VI.’s first Parliament; but Windsor was, alone among colleges that were not educational, specially exempted from its provisions. There is, however, a certificate, by the Chantry Commissioners of London and Middlesex, for the parish of St. Benet Finck, in which, while certifying a chantry in the parish church, they say complainingly (the certificates were in fact drawn up by the church wardens) that the Dean and Chapter of Windsor “is parson,” and the value of the same £16, “and but one priest by them found to serve the same, which priest is very unhable to serve the same.” They add that “within the said parish is a Grammar Scole by the name of a Fre Scole, called Saynt Anthonies, the Scolemaister whereof is nowe Maister Edmond Johnson, and his wages paid by the Stewarde of Seynt Anthonyes, and how muche is not knowen.”

Now Stow is said to have been born about 1525. He tells us in a passage which is a locus classicus in the history of London schools as much as the famous “Description” of Fitzstephen himself, that in his youth, which, for this purpose, we may take to be from 1535 to 1545, the arguing of the schoolboys as to the principles of grammar of which Fitzstephen wrote, was still continued.[[110]]

For I myself in my youth have yearly seen on the eve of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools repair unto the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the Priory in Smithfield, where, upon a bank, boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down, and then the overcomer, taking the place, did like as the first, and in the end the best opposers and answerers had rewards; which I observed not but it made both good schoolmasters and also good scholars diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the obtaining of this garland. I remember there repaired to these exercises amongst others the Masters and scholars of the free schools of St. Paul’s of London, of St. Peter’s of Westminster, of St. Thomas Acon’s Hospital and of St. Anthony’s Hospital; whereof the last named commonly presented the best scholars and had the prize in those days.

It is very doubtful, for reasons which will appear when we come to deal with Westminster and St. Thomas Acon’s, whether Stow’s memory was accurate when he brought scholars from Westminster and the Mercers’ School to St. Bartholomew’s before its dissolution. However that may be, Stow goes on:

This Priory of St. Bartholomew being surrendered to Henry VIII. those disputations of scholars in that place surceased; and was again, only for a year or twain, in the reign of Edward VI., renewed in the cloister of Christ’s Hospital, when the best scholars then still of St. Anthony’s school, howsoever the same be now fallen both in number and estimation, were rewarded with bows and arrows of silver given to them by Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith.

Now, as Christ’s Hospital was only founded on June 26, 1552, and then, as we shall see, as a mere Foundlings’ Hospital, and Edward VI. died in the following January, there was not time for these renewed contests in his reign and Stow’s memory must have been at fault. The resuscitation of the contests is more likely to have taken place in the reign of Mary when the “old learning” and boy-bishops and the like revived with the “old religion.” However that may be, the school continued to flourish under Elizabeth, on Stow’s own showing.[[111]]

Nevertheless, however, the encouragement failed. The schollers of Paules meeting with them of St. Anthonies, would call them “Anthonie pigs” and they againe would call the other “Pigeons of Paules,” because many pigeons were bred in Paules church, and Saint Anthonie was always figured with a pig following him, and, mindfull of the former usage, did for a long season disorderly in the open streete provoke one another with “Salve tu quoque! placet tibi mecum disputare?” “Placet.” And so proceeding from this to questions in grammar, they usually fell from wordes to blows, with their satchels full of bookes, many times in great heaps, that they troubled the streets and passengers; so that finally they were restrained, with the decay of St. Anthonies schoole.

Strype,[[112]] in his edition of Stow a century later, gives further evidence:

This school kept equal credit with that of Paul’s; both which had the greatest reputation in the city in former times. I meet[[113]] with a merry retainer at Queen Elizabeth’s Court, giving an account of the great entertainment she had in her progress, anno 1575, at Kenilworth Castle by the Earl of Leicester: “I went to school forsooth both at Polles and also at St. Antoniez! In the 5th form past Æsop’s fables, I wiz; read Terence, ‘Vos, isthœc intro auferte,’ and began with my Virgil ‘Tityre tu patulae.’ I could [i.e. knew] my Rules: and could construe and pars with the best of them.”

Strype tells us also how this school used at a certain time of the year to go in procession. “Thus I find in the year 1562 on the 15th day of September there set out from Mile End 200 children of this St. Anthonies School, all well be-seen, and so along through Algate down Cornhill to the Stocks and so to the Freer Austins, with streamers and flags and drums beating. And after, every child went home to their fathers and friends.” This September outing was an old custom in schools. It was for a nut gathering. It appears in the accounts of St. Anthony’s on September 3, 1510, when “a sporting day in the cuntre” cost “the Hospital” 18d., the almsmen and choristers being entertained at home for 7d. William Malim mentions it as one of the Eton holidays in 1560; indeed, the drums and flags strongly suggest the Eton “montem.” Payments for such an outing occur frequently in the accounts of Winchester College. It forms the subject of a “theme” at Winchester by Christopher Johnson, Headmaster in 1560-70. As late as 1711[[114]] “nutting-money” was one of the regular payments exacted from Winchester scholars.

Stow’s story of the suppression of the street-shows of the scholars is borne out by the curious injunction issued by the Lord Mayor on August 20, 1561.[[115]]

Item, yt was agreyd that precepts shall forthewith be made to every one of my maisters the Aldermen for the stayinge of all skolemaysters and teacher of youthe within this cytye from makynge of eny more musters or commen and open shewes of theyr skollers, within the said cyttye or without, in ryche apparrell or otherwyse, eyther on horseback or on foote, upon payne of imprysonment.

Edmund Johnson above mentioned became a Canon of Windsor in 1560 and apparently died in 1562.[[116]] So that the school was in fact at the height of its fame and success under the very man whom Stow accuses of having ruined it. Its fame and greatness outlived its so-called spoiler. Edmund Johnson, so far from being considered a spoiler of school, ought to be enrolled among the many great schoolmasters whom Winchester produced, along with Christopher Johnson, the witty Latin poet, who ruled over Winchester itself at the same time (1558-68) and was perhaps a relation.

Among the archives of St. Paul’s Cathedral is a stray account of St. Anthony’s Hospital for the year 1564, and it shows both almshouse and school going on; the twelve almspeople duly receiving their shilling a week and the “Instructor of the school (scolarum) in grammar” his due stipend of £16 a year.

After Johnson’s departure a fall may have taken place in the character of the school, but if so, that was not his fault. Strype indeed goes out of his way to correct Stow, and carefully tells us[[117]] that “it was in being in Elizabeth’s time when one Hilton a great and good man was master.” He must have succeeded Johnson. In 1584 another master, Thomas Browne, was schoolmaster and receiver of the Hospital, as one of his accounts[[118]] remaining shows. He duly paid twelve almsfolk 7s. a week and his own wages £16, besides £1 for himself as receiver.

Even as to its then state and the state of the Hospital itself, there is reason to believe that Stow’s information was wrong and was probably derived from a tainted source. For in 1590 a determined attack on the Hospital was made by one of the band of informers who infested the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It was a favourite device for some speculative attorney or money-lender to hunt up old monastic or chantry lands, allege that they had been confiscated to the Crown under the Acts for the dissolution of monasteries or of chantries, as the case might be, but had been concealed from it by the tenants, or other holders; and to obtain a grant from the Crown of such concealed lands by letters patent. Sometimes these patents were in the form of roving commissions for concealed lands over whole counties, sometimes for all the possessions of specific monasteries or chantries, sometimes for specific lands belonging to such foundations. The Crown in any case gained the cash paid down for the grant. The informer, if he recovered the whole property, made an enormous gain. More often he only levied blackmail on the proprietor, who was glad for a moderate payment to escape the trouble and vexation of a law suit, with the Crown as nominal plaintiff. The practice went on as late as 1620, when a too determined attack on the chantry lands of the City Livery Companies induced the Companies to combine and pay the Crown a sum down for quiet possession of the lands and for an Act of Parliament which stopped all further proceedings for concealed lands. The facts of the St. Anthony’s case are these:—

In 1589 Edward Wymarke and John Leake obtained from Queen Elizabeth a grant by letters patent of all the lands of St. Anthony’s Hospital, as lands which had properly passed to the Crown, but had been “concealed” by the Dean and Chapter of Windsor.

They then brought an action for ejectment in the Queen’s Bench against Timothy Lucy, gentleman, and Thomas Cooper, farmers of the manors of Valence Galant and Easthall and other lands in Essex. The Dean and Chapter took counter action by a Bill on the Equity side of the Court of Exchequer to restrain further proceedings in the ejectment. Leake alleged that the Dean and Chapter “compounded with the poor and put them out of their houses, and others that would not remain in a corner there until their end.” The church was shut up and “so remained until it was appointed to the French nation, long in Her Majesty’s time.” “The School was no more a Free School; but the Master had £16 per annum allowed him, and compounded with the parents of the children to be taught there, at his pleasure; and now of late the curate of the parish church is farmer of the parsonage and master of the school and a preacher abroad, and by reason of his other calling there are now very few scholars, the master not employed, a bad room to dwell in and a school in name, but not free or of credit.”

The patentees, however, generously offered that if the Lord Treasurer should think “that in passing the patent Her Majesty was hardly dealt with in it, or your zeal for the school to be maintained which is no Free School, so your Honour would procure from Her Majesty a foundation and take the patronage. I can be content there go a better maintenance to the Master, viz. £30 per annum or more, or to do any act your Honour should think conscionable.”

The Dean and Chapter in their answer did not deny that they had diminished the number of priests, clerks, choristers, and scholars in the Hospital, but urged that they no longer got £323 a year as they used to do “by begging,” but now spent more on the Hospital by twenty nobles a year at least than they received. As to the School they said “the Schoolmaster teacheth as many freely as his grant bindeth him unto, for it was never free for all that come thither, but only for the poorer sort.” The schoolmaster himself, Mr. Brown, put in a separate answer. He alleged that “the School was never free to all comers, but only for the choristers of the house and all such other destitute children; as may be gathered by sundry ancient accompts. The Schoolmaster is bound by the words of his patent to entertain 40 poor scholars, whose friends are not able to pay for their teaching, if so many come, and offer their children to be taught freely.” He said that he had never refused any who claimed to be free. As for compounding, that was granted him, in regard that the revenues of the house will neither allow him an usher, nor his diet, as his predecessors had, among the priests. He denied that he was curate of the church as well as schoolmaster, though he acknowledged that having “the lease of the appropriation come into his hands he thought himself bound to do some duty in the church as well as in the school, and therefore entered the ministry the sooner.” “Neither,” he remarked, “is it so strange or odious a matter for a schoolmaster to be a preacher as it seemeth in Mr. Leake’s eyes,” though in this we may fairly say that Mr. Leake’s eyes were more far-seeing than the parson-schoolmaster’s. Then he pays a tribute to his predecessor. “This place prospered well enough under a schoolmaster who was also a preacher, Mr. Edmund Johnson. But then there was some hope that learning and religion might be rewarded; but the daily decreasing and falling away of which reward, as by other sinister means so most apparently by concealments” (this was a side blow at Mr. Leake), “hath discouraged parents to bring up their sons at their book, but even in the Universities also at this day, more is the pity.” He then utters the complaint which the unsuccessful schoolmaster, like the unsuccessful in all professions, has always made, and makes, that there is too much competition. “If there be fewer scholars in S. Anthony’s than have been heretofore, the true cause thereof has to be imputed to the multitude of teachers in every corner both of the city and country, and to the wonted reward of learning, and not to the want of diligence in the schoolmaster there.” Finally, he challenges the facts. “If trial be made it may be that both the number and the learning of his scholars may fall out better than Mr. Leake would have it.”

The end of the whole matter was that it was referred to Her Majesty’s General Attorney, Sir John Pepham, and the Solicitor General, Thomas Gerton. They certified that as the grant of Edward IV., confirmed by Innocent the Pope, had made the Hospital unconditionally a possession of St. George’s College, the purchasers from Her Majesty ought not to molest the Dean and Canons or any of their Governors in the said lands. So Mr. Leake and his friends took nothing by their pains.

Not many years later, however, the Chapter, on the ground that the Hospital cost more than they got from it, tried to withhold payment of the scholarship fund from Oriel College. This roused Oriel to look up the documents, and they counterclaimed not merely the customary £10 : 8s. but the whole twenty-five marks of the original grants and threatened to enter on the Essex lands if it was not paid. Thereon the Windsor Chapter filed a Bill in chancery. Lord Keeper Bacon’s decree, November 17, 1617, founded on an award of Sir Henry Savile, T. Frith, a canon of Windsor, and Joshua Sanders, confirmed the right of Oriel to some payment; but in the absence of any proof from Oriel that they had ever received more, and the presence of proof on the part of Windsor that since they became possessed of St. Anthony’s they had never paid more, the decree was for £10 : 8s. a year only. Windsor paid £30 for costs. The sum of £10 : 8s. a year is still paid to Oriel College by Windsor College, though it is to be feared that not many scholars are now maintained by the payment.

In 1600 St. Anthony’s School must have been in very low water. A curious compact was made by Mr. Thomas Smith, the schoolmaster in that year, with Mr. Thomas Bradshaw. The latter was to come to the school with “a dozen of his own scholars at the least” and to teach all the poor children in the parish of St. Benet Finck “being offered and brought unto him according to the limitation of the patent,” and hold the office of teacher or master conjointly with Mr. T. Smith, taking all the profits of his own pupils, while Mr. Smith was to take the profit on those brought in by him. Neither was to interfere with the teaching or management of the other’s scholars, except in case one of them was ill or absent, when the other was to teach the whole school. The scholars belonging to either were to be placed equally on both sides of the school. Finally, on payment at any time of £10 by Bradshaw, he was to have an assignment of Smith’s patent and place. The Chapter do not seem to have relished this bargain, as there are some notes attached to this agreement as to the terms of the original grant to Smith, which included a condition to appoint a deputy, and to teach free as many children as were brought thither up to forty; and to keep a register of such free scholars, to be exhibited to the Dean whenever required, and it is remarked that the arrangement with Bradshaw was a breach of these conditions. A draft surrender of the mastership by Smith, May 1, 43 Elizabeth (1601), is with this paper. It was not, however, executed by him, as ten years afterwards he is found still keeping the Hospital accounts as receiver and paying himself “pro informatione scholarium.” In 1622-23 William Walker acted in the same capacity as receiver and schoolmaster, and duly paid himself and twelve almsmen and women their stipends. In 1661-62, the latest account preserved shows him still acting in the double capacity, but receiving the augmented salary of £25 a year.

In 1666 St. Anthony’s was burnt with the rest of London. The church was rebuilt after the Fire for the French Church, and still continues. But the school seems never to have been rebuilt, and when Strype published his edition of Stow in 1720 it no longer existed. So ended this once famous school.

We must now return from the later history of St. Anthony’s School to its beginning. It was founded, as we have seen, in 1441. Five years afterwards there is a series of documents which are evidence of some struggle going on in regard to education in London, the exact purport and the result of which are equally obscure. All we know is that on May 3, 24 Henry VI., i.e. 1446, a writ of Privy Seal was sent to the Chancellor directing him to issue letters patent, which was duly done on May 6, dealing with schools in London. The letters patent are of course in Latin, in which language they long remained, but the Privy Seal, which is verbatim to the same effect, was in English. It begins by a recital which is almost an echo of the Petition to Parliament in 1394. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London “considered the great ‘abusions’ that have been of long time in London, that many and divers persons not sufficiently instructed in grammar presumed to hold common grammar schools in great deceit of their scholars, as also of the friends that find them to school,” and so they had “in their great wisdom” devised a remedy. They had ordained 5 schools of grammar and “no moo” within the said city; “one within the churchyard of St. Paul; another within the collegiate church of St. Martin; the third in Bow Church (Beate Marie de Arcubus, in the Letters Patent); the fourth in the church of St. Dunstan in the East; the 5th in our hospital of St. Anthony within our said city.” This they had openly declared by their letters patent thereupon made. The King, therefore, ordered his letters patent to be made confirming the letters of the bishops, and commanding “all our subjittes of our said citee “that they, nor none of them, trouble nor impeach the masters of the said schools in any wise in this “partie,” but rather help and assist them inasmuch as in them is. The letters patent were duly issued on the day the writ of Privy Seal was delivered, as the Act of Parliament required. This patent was misinterpreted by Stow[[119]] as creating schools “besides St. Paul’s” in the places named, only he puts St. Dunstan on the West for St. Dunstan in the East. He repeats this error[[120]] apropos of Bow Church, which he says was a grammar school by commandment of Henry VI., whereas, as we have seen, it existed before the reign of Henry II. Stow then goes on: “And in the next year, to wit 1394 (sic), the said King ordained by Parliament that four other Grammar schools should be created.” It is curious that in all the editions till Strype’s this extraordinary error of making 1394 the next year to 1446 was repeated. No doubt Stow had become acquainted with the ordinance of Richard II. and mixed it up with that of Henry VI. and never noticed the confusion. It is the case that in February 1446/7 an ordinance was made in Parliament about London schools. It was founded upon a very remarkable petition. The full wise and discreet Commons were asked “to consider the great number of Grammar Schools that sometime were in divers parts of the realm, beside those that were in London and how few ‘ben in these days.’ This,” they say, “causes great hurt not only in the spiritual part of the church, where often times it appears too openly in some persons with great shame”—we feel inclined to call Name, name!—“but also in temporal part, to whom it is full expedient to have competent congruity for many causes”—whatever that may mean. The petitioners go on to point out how London is “the common concourse of this land,” not only for Londoners born, but for others who come up, “some for lack of schoolmasters in their own country, and some for the great alms of Lords, Merchants and others,” so that many poor creatures would never have gained the “virtue and cunning” they have without such alms. Therefore they say it is desirable to have in London “a sufficient number of Schools and good Informers of Grammar” (the headmaster of Winchester’s title is Magister Informator), “and not for the singular avail of 2 or 3 persons, grievously to hurt the multitude of young people of all this London.” “For where,” they sententiously observe, “there is a great number of learners and few teachers, and all the learners be compelled to go to the same few teachers, and to no other, the Masters wax rich in money, and the learners poor in cunning, as experience openly shows, against all virtue and order of weal public.”

Four parsons, Mr. William Lichfield of All Hallows the Great, Thames Street; Mr. Gilbert (Worthington) of St. Andrew’s in Holborn, suburb of the City; Mr. John Cole of St. Peter’s, Cornhill; and John Neell of St. Mary Abchurch, and Master of St. Thomas Acon’s Hospital, were, they say, stirred to devotion and pity by such considerations, and therefore asked that the rectors and their successors in their respective parishes may “ordain, create, establish and set a person sufficiently learned in grammar, and there to teach to all that will learn” with power of removal and new appointment in the rectors. The answer was “The King wills that it be do as it is desired, so that it be done by the advice of the Ordinary, or else of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being.”

It has been assumed that these schools were set up accordingly. Stow states it for a fact as to St. Peter’s, Cornhill,[[121]] St. Andrew’s, Holborn,[[122]] and St. Thomas of Acon’s Hospital,[[123]] and has been followed by other writers. It is doubtful if a single one of these schools was ever established, except that in St. Thomas of Acon’s Hospital. The very unusual form of the King’s answer to the petition at once raises suspicion. The first clause of it is the common formula for consent to a “private” bill, “Le roi fait comme il est desiré.” But it is followed by the very significant condition “so that it be by the advice of the Ordinary, the Bishop of London, or the Archbishop.” A veto was thus given to the very two officials who, doubtless under much the same pressure, had, only the year before, limited the schools in London to five: of which three were immemorial, that of St. Anthony’s Hospital in an exempt place of the Crown’s patronage was already established with the consent of the Bishop, and the fifth St. Dunstan’s was, like St. Mary-le-Bow, a “peculiar” of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not very likely, therefore, that the Archbishop and Bishop would be eager to assist in almost doubling the number of authorised schools in London. As regards St. Andrew’s and All Hallows the Great it is practically certain that no school was ever established. The two petitioning parsons of these churches both died very soon afterwards. The will of Gilbert Worthington of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, is given in Strype’s edition of Stow.[[124]] It was made July 28, 1447, and was proved on August 12 following. The only reference to schools or education in it is a bequest of five marks to his brother Walter to put him to school, and 40s. to the poor scholars of God’s House in Cambridge, just founded by Bingham. The inscription on his tomb, also preserved,[[125]] makes no mention of any school foundation. Neither Stow nor any one else states that there was any evidence of a school at St. Andrew’s. The date of the death of the parson of All Hallows, William Lichfield, is not given by Newcourt in the Repertorium, but as it there appears that Thomas Westleigh, S.T.B., was appointed to the rectory, vacant on the death of Lichfield, on November 1448, he must have died some time before that date. No proof of any grammar school having been kept here has yet been produced.

Whether a school was established in St. Thomas’s Hospital is also doubtful. There is no trace of such a school in the documents published by Sir John Watney in his account of the Hospital, privately printed by the Mercers Company in 1592. The Hospital was surrendered to King Henry VIII., October 20, 1538. The Mercers Company, whose hall was next door and who had used its church for their purposes, almost immediately, December 18, 1538, opened negotiations with the King to buy it. On April 21, 1541, the King sold it to them for £969 : 17 : 6, an enormous sum, equivalent to some £20,000 of our money, subject to the conditions that they should keep three chaplains to pray for his soul, and also a Free Grammar School with a sufficient master to teach 25 children and scholars freely for ever. This was the origin of the Mercers’ School, and this alone is the reason for supposing that there had been a grammar school in the Hospital before. Until the Mercers allow their records to be ransacked by some expert with an eye open to the evidence as to schools, it is impossible to assert that there was or was not a school in the Hospital. It is strange, if there was, that no evidence has yet been forthcoming of its existence. The verdict must be, for the present at least, that its existence is not proven.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I
THE CITY COMPANIES

On August 14, 1880, the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the City Companies issued a circular addressed to all the Companies. This circular sought information on the various points as follows:

Part I
FOUNDATION AND OBJECT

Return A.—A statement of the date, ascertained or probable, of the foundation of the Company, and of the circumstances, so far as they can be discovered from its documents of foundation or archives, in which the Company had its origin.

Return B.—A list of the charters, charters of inspeximus, and other instruments of a similar nature whether originals or copies, which have been at any time in the possession of the Company, together with an abstract of the purport of each, regard being specially had to any evidence which it may contain as to the object of the foundation of the Company.

Return C.—A list of any trust deeds “founding, regulating, or affecting” the Company, with the date of each, the names of the parties thereto, and an abstract of the purport of each.

Return D.—A list with dates of any “decrees of Court,” whether of the Courts of Common Law or of Chancery, or of any acts of the Courts of Aldermen or of Common Council, “regulating or affecting” the Company, with a statement of the effect of each decision.

Return E.—A list of any other documents, not included in the descriptions in the preceding returns, which “found, regulate, or affect” the Company, with dates and an abstract of the effect of each.

Return F.—A concise history of the Company from the time of its foundation to the present day, with special reference to the inquiry contained in the commission as to “the objects for which the Company was founded,” and “how far those objects are now being carried into effect.”

Return G.—Has the Company a licence in mortmain? When was such licence granted (referring to the document by description)? What is its extent, and to what extent is it now unexhausted?

Return H.—Is there vested in the Company and how, whether by charter, statute, order of the Court of Aldermen, act of Common Council, or otherwise, any right of exercising superintendence over or any duty or discretion to encourage in any way any and what art, trade, or business? State the nature and local limits of such control. In what manner and to what extent is such control now exercised? If such control is not now exercised, state the circumstances under which its exercise has fallen into desuetude.

Return I.—A list of the charities, eleemosynary, educational or otherwise, which are under the management of the Company, stating in each case the name of the founder, the date and nature of the benefaction, its original and its present value as regards both capital and income, and the purposes to which the funds have been applied for each of the last preceding ten years.

The returns of the twelve Great Companies have been published (1884) in a Blue Book. I had prepared at first to transcribe certain portions of these returns from each Company; but the information after all belongs to bodies which are private rather than public. One can understand that a Company may on the whole desire not to set forth all its sources of income, nor its methods of expenditure. The Company of Grocers indeed entered their protest against an inquiry by the Crown, “without the authority of Parliament, into what has been judicially declared to be private property,” as being “without precedent, arbitrary, and a breach of the liberties of the subject.” Moreover, the returns are so voluminous that even an abridgment of the figures would occupy far more space than it is possible to give. They may therefore remain in the Blue Book open for the examination of any person curious to read them, and competent to understand them. For the purpose of this work an epitome of the history of each Company, and of the privileges of a Liveryman will be quite sufficient. And for these I am indebted mainly to the Report of the Commission.