per breve de priuato sigillo &c.
The company is not traceable in London, but Daniel brought it to Norwich in 1616–17. By April 1618 he had assigned his privilege to Martin Slater, John Edmonds and Nathaniel Clay, who obtained, presumably from the Privy Council, supplementary letters of assistance in which they are described as ‘her Maiesties servants’, and are authorized to play as ‘her Maiesties servants of her Royall Chamber of Bristoll’.[206] From a complaint sent in the following June by the Mayor of Exeter to Sir Thomas Lake, it emerges that, although the patent was for children, the company consisted of five youths and several grown men.[207] Slater and Edmonds still held their status as Queen’s men (q.v.) in 1619.
vi. WESTMINSTER SCHOOL
Head Masters:—John Adams (1540); Alexander Nowell (1543–53); Nicholas Udall (1555–6); John Passey (1557–8, with Richard Spencer as usher); John Randall (1563); Thomas Browne (1564–9); Francis Howlyn (1570–1); Edward Graunte (1572–92); William Camden (1593–8, Undermaster 1575–93); Richard Ireland (1599–1610); John Wilson (1610–22).
Choir Masters (?):—William Cornish (1480); John Taylor (1561–7); John Billingsley (1572); William Elderton (1574).
[Bibliographical Note.—The best sources of information are: R. Widmore, History of Westminster Abbey (1751); J. Welch [—C. B. Phillimore], Alumni Westmonasterienses, ed. 2 (1852); Appendix to First Report of the Cathedral Commissioners (1854); F. H. Forshall, Westminster School, Past and Present (1884); J. Sargeaunt, Annals of Westminster School (1898); A. F. Leach, The Origin of Westminster School in Journal of Education, n. s. xxvii (1905), 79. Some valuable records have been printed by E. J. L. Scott in the Athenaeum, and extracts from others are given in the Observer for 7 Dec. 1919. A. F. Leach has fixed the dates of Udall’s life in Encycl. Brit. s.v.]
There is no trace of any grammar school in the abbey of Westminster until the fourteenth century. The Customary of 1259–83 (ed. E. M. Thompson for Henry Bradshaw Soc.) only contemplates education for the novices, and in the earliest almoner’s accounts, which begin with 1282, entries of 1317 ‘in maintaining Nigel at school for the love of God’ (Leach, 80) and 1339–40, ‘pro scholaribus inueniendis ad scolas’ (E. H. Pearce, The Monks of Westminster Abbey, 79), need only refer to the support of scholars at a University. But from 1354–5 there were almonry boys (pueri Elemosinariae) under the charge of the Sub-Almoner, and these are traceable up to the dissolution. To them we may assign the ludus of the Boy Bishop on St. Nicholas’ day, mentions of which have been noted in 1369, 1388, 1413, and 1540 (Mediaeval Stage, i. 360; Leach, 80). They had a school house near ‘le Millebank’, and from 1367 the Almoner paid a Magister Puerorum. From 1387 he is often called Magister Scolarum and in the fifteenth century Magister Scolarium. From 1510 the boys under the Magister become pueri grammatici, and may be distinct from certain pueri cantantes for whom since 1479–80 the Almoner had paid a separate teacher of singing. The first of these song-masters was William Cornish, doubtless of the family so closely connected with the Chapel Royal (q.v.). In 1540 the pueri grammatici were reorganized as the still existing College of St. Peter, Westminster, which is therefore generally regarded as owing its origin to Henry VIII, who on the surrender of the abbey in 1540 turned it into a college of secular canons, and provided for a school of forty scholars. This endured in some form through the reactionary reign of Mary, whose favourite dramatist Nicholas Udall became its Head Master, although the date of his appointment on 16 December 1555 (A. F. Leach in Encycl. Brit., s.v. Udall) makes it probable that, if he wrote his Ralph Roister Doister for a school at all, it was for Eton (q.v.) rather than Westminster. His predecessor Alexander Nowell is said by Strype to have ‘brought in the reading of Terence for the better learning the pure Roman style’, and, as the Sub-Almoner paid ‘xvid. for wryting of a play for the chyldren’ as early as 1521 (Observer), the performance of Latin comedies by the boys may have been pre-Elizabethan. It is provided for in the statutes drafted by Dean Bill (c. 1560) after the restoration of her father’s foundation by Elizabeth. These statutes also contemplate a good deal of interrelation between the choir school and the grammar school. They are printed in the Report of the Cathedral Commission (App. I, 80). The personnel of the foundation was to include (a) ‘clerici duodecim’, of whom ‘unus sit choristarum doctor’, (b) ‘decem pueri symphoniaci sive choristae’, presumably in continuation of the former singing boys, (c) ‘praeceptores duo ad erudiendam iuventutem’, (d) ‘discipuli grammatici quadraginta’. The ‘praeceptores’ are distinguished later in the document as ‘archididascalus’ and ‘hypodidascalus’, and the former is also called ‘ludimagister’. By c. 5 the choristers are to have a preference in elections to the grammar school. The following section ‘De Choristis et Choristarum Magistro’ forms part of c. 9:
‘Statuimus et ordinamus ut in ecclesia nostra praedicta sint decem choristae, pueri tenerae aetatis et vocibus sonoris ad cantandum, et ad artem musicam discendam, et etiam ad musica instrumenta pulsanda apti, qui choro inserviant, ministrent, et cantent. Ad hos praeclare instituendos, unus eligatur qui sit honestae famae, vitae probae, religionis sincerae, artis musicae peritus, et ad cantandum et musica instrumenta pulsanda exercitatus, qui pueris in praedictis scientiis et exercitiis docendis aliisque muniis [? muneribus] in choro obeundis studiose vacabit. Hunc magistrum choristarum appellari volumus. Cui muneri doctores et baccalaureos musices aliis praeferendos censemus. Volumus etiam quoties eum ab ecclesia nostra abesse contingat, alterum substituat a decano vel eo absente prodecano approbandum. Prospiciat item puerorum saluti, quorum et in literis (donec ut in scholam nostram admittantur apti censebuntur) et in morum modestia et in convictu educationem et liberalem institutionem illius fidei et industriae committimus. Quod si negligens et in docendo desidiosus, aut in salute puerorum et recta eorum educatione minime providus et circumspectus, et ideo non tolerandus inveniatur, post trinam admonitionem (si se non emendaverit) ab officio deponatur. Qui quidem choristarum magister ad officium suum per se fideliter obeundum iuramento etiam adigetur. Choristae postquam octo orationis partes memoriter didicerint et scribere mediocriter noverint, ad scholam nostram ut melius in grammatica proficiant singulis diebus profestis accedant, ibique duabus minimum horis maneant, et a praeceptoribus instituantur.’
The following section ‘De Comoediis et Ludis in Natali Domini exhibendis’ comes in c. 10:
‘Quo iuventus maiore cum fructu tempus Natalis Christi terat, et tum actioni tum pronunciationi decenti melius se assuescat: statuimus ut singulis annis intra 12m post festum Natalis Christi dies [? diem], vel postea arbitrio decani, ludimagister et praeceptor simul Latine unam, magister choristarum Anglice alteram comoediam aut tragoediam a discipulis et choristis suis in aula privatim vel publice agendam, curent. Quod si non prestiterint singuli quorum negligentia omittuntur decem solidis mulctentur.’