As for poor Calamy, he too died of the Fire. He was driven through the burning ruins, and so shocked was he at the sight of the destruction that had fallen on the great theatre of his popularity, that he never again quitted the room at Enfield, whither he was conveyed, but died on the day that Shirley and his wife were buried. Thus perished two of the greatest of the alumni of whom Merchant Tailors’ can boast. To the roll of those pupils we will again resort.
First among them we find handsome Ezekiel Hopkins, with whom all the women were in love,—in love both with his preaching and his person. Oh, happy Ezekiel! cunning Hopkins! Presbyterian when Presbytery was in power; Independent when to be so was to be “No. 1;” and winning all hearts from the episcopal pulpit of St Mary’s, Exeter, and subsequently St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, when Episcopacy and Royalty walked hand-in-hand among the lieges. Excellent Ezekiel! But, if he had his conceits, his schoolfellow Webb had his hobby; and nothing could convince him that the Chinese language was not the language spoken by Adam and Eve before the Fall.
Moreover there was the penniless and threadbare student Bonwicke; and the well-paid Bernard, tutor to the Dukes of Grafton and Northumberland, sons of Charles II. and the Duchess of Cleveland; but for his employers he was too pure and grave a man. And there was Wells, the Nonconformist and, sad blot in the school escutcheon, Titus Oates, who was also a nonconformist to morality and religion; and Needler, fit name for pupil of such house, and who wrote in defence of the Trinity when half England had more delight in the argument than the end for which the argument was raised. Several others of the pupils, now grown men, in the reign of James II., were hanging over their pulpits, half Romanists, half Reformers. Like the tomb of the old prelate at Canterbury, they were neither in the Church nor out of it, but a little of both. Indeed many of these men were singularly constituted; and we may cite as an instance the case of young Dawes, who began his poetical career by composing a poem, which I should not like to read, entitled the ‘Anatomy of Atheism.’ Nevertheless Merchant Tailors’ School boasted of Dawes, and of Boulter and Wilcox, whose election to Magdalen was called by Dr. Hough, the President, the “Golden Election,” as the Charterhouse boasted of Addison. The “small change” here hardly represented the value of the larger piece.
Sayer and Oliver, two fellow-pupils of the school, were successive Archdeacons of Surrey; Joshua Barnes and Peter Heylin were also of the “Table” or the “Bench;” and Wright, Vicar of Okeham, was of the latter, and not less famed for his steady refusal of all preferment. Like ‘Silver Penny,’ so named for his pure eloquence, though it might have been also for his liberality, and who has made so exquisite a restoration of Mongeham Church, near Deal, he loved the temple of which he was the priest too well to wish to change his office. Then there were botanical Sherrard; Torriano, of Italian blood; Dee, descended from that Dr. Dee who fooled Elizabeth so “consumedly;” and William Bridge, himself the son of a tailor and draper, and who contributed a Threnodia to the cairn of melodious mourning heaped upon the dead body of William the Third.
Merchant Tailors’ had peculiar joy in the accession of Anne, for it was through one of the pupils that the succession of this sovereign lady was undisputed. Crowther had married her mother, Anne Hyde, to the Duke of York; and he did this so cautiously and entirely according to law, with ample proof to support it, that James strove in vain to procure an annulling of the marriage, and Merchant Tailors’ looked on the position of the female monarch as one which had been achieved for her by one of the popular scholars of the house. It was expected that she would have shown her royal gratitude by conferring the Bishopric of Lincoln on little Doctor Dawes, another scholar; but Dawes preached unpalatable truths to her, and Anne would not move him from an honorary chaplaincy. “You have lost a bishopric by your preaching,” said a good-natured friend to him. “I do not know how that may be,” said Dawes, “but I certainly never mean to try to gain one by preaching.” Divinely well said, O doughty Dawes! You well deserved what you afterwards attained, the See of Chester.
Among the pupils who were raised to the Bench, Mews, of Winchester, was perhaps as remarkable as any. His death certainly was so. He was subject to fainting fits, from which he was used to recover by smelling hartshorn. He was once in conversation with a clerical friend, when he was suddenly attacked by one of these fits. He was speechless, but he pointed to the bottle of hartshorn on his table. The friend seized the bottle, and, opening the prelate’s mouth, poured the whole of the contents down his throat, by which the bishop was suffocated. Notwithstanding this neat achievement, the zealous clerical friend did not succeed to the vacant see.
I could name many more “prelates” and “parsons,” who were all good men and true, and who did honour to the establishment wherein they had received their earlier education; but the glory of all these pales before the brighter reputation of Ambrose Bonwicke, that “pattern for a student,” who was ever so mild, save when he helped his father, the schoolmaster, to flog the boys; so loyal, save when he refused to read the prayer for the prosperity of the House of Hanover; and so wise, save when, in honour of religion, he brought on death by his austerities. He lacked no eulogists after his decease; and it is suggestive as to what was considered early rising in the days of the first George, when we find young Bonwicke praised for getting up at half-past six! Merchant Tailors’ School was prouder of him than it ever was of the greatly intellectual Lowth. On the other hand, it was ashamed of Tooley, of St. John’s, who edited Tully’s ‘Offices,’ for the good reason that he was a namesake of the author; and this, his poor qualification, was also his solitary one. He effected one other deed,—the seducing of Amhurst to such bad ways, that the latter ex-alumnus of Merchant Tailors’ was expelled the University. Amhurst, in a preface to his poems, declared that he was so punished because he was said to “love foreign turnips and Presbyterian bishops; and to believe that steeples and organs were not necessary to salvation.”
Amhurst was among the “odd fellows” of the school. So was Leigh, who died at Gravelines, and whom the Roman Catholics proved to have died in their faith, by burying him within the church in that lively locality. Duncan Dee belongs rather to the bold than the odd fellows. He will ever be remembered as the intrepid defender of Sacheverel. Among the worthiest fellows was Wheatly, for ever famous for his immortal illustration of the Book of Common Prayer. Among the stout-hearted fellows was that paradoxical Dr. Byrom, of short-hand notoriety, who was loved for his wit and worth, and whose diary has lately been published by the Chetham Society. He was the son of a linendraper; married for love; struggled for life at his leisure; earned a decent maintenance by teaching and practising the system of short-hand which he had invented; spent his last days in well-earned ease; and is famous for his epigrammatic epitaph on that irregular and chemical genius and jolly fellow, Dr. Byfield, who invented the sal volatile oleosum, and who was thus celebrated by Byrom over a flask at the Rainbow:—
“Hic jacet Dr. Byfield, diu volatilis, tandem fixus!”