The statutes appear never to have been confirmed by the Crown, and their practical adoption was subject to certain exceptions. Thus, it is stated in the report of the Public Schools Commission in 1864 (i. 159) that there is no reason to believe that the provision giving a preference to choristers in elections for the grammar school was ever attended to.
Of plays and the like, however, there are various records. The first since 1521 is at the Lord Mayor’s Day of 1561, when the Merchant Taylors’ expenses for their pageant included items ‘to John Tayllour, master of the Children of the late monastere of Westminster, for his children that sung and played in the pageant’, and ‘to John Holt momer in reward for attendance given of the children in the pageant’. Similar payments were made to Taylor as ‘Mr of the quirysters’ for the services of the children on the Ironmongers’ pageant of 1566.[208] In 1562 the choristers of Westminster Abbey performed a goodly play before the Society of Parish Clerks after their annual dinner.[209] In 1564–5 comes the first of a series of Court performances, which received assistance from the Revels office. To this occasion belongs a memorandum of ‘Thexpenses of twoo playes viz. Heautontimoroumenos Terentii and Miles Gloriosus Plauti plaied by the children of the grammer schoole in the colledge of Westminster and before the Quenes maiestie anno 1564’.[210] The items include, ‘At ye rehersing before Sir Thomas Benger for pinnes and suger candee vjd.’, ‘For a lynke to bring thapparell from the reuells iiijd.’, ‘At the playing of Miles Glor: in Mr. Deanes howse for pinnes half a thousand vjd.’, ‘Geuen to Mr. Holte yeoman of the reuells xs.’, ‘To Mr. Taylor his man’, ‘For one Plautus geven to ye Queenes maiestie and fowre other vnto the nobilitie xjs.’ It is not quite clear whether the Heautontimorumenus, as well as the Miles Gloriosus, was given before the Queen, but I think not. In 1565–6 Elizabeth was again present at the play of Sapientia Solomonis, and there were payments ‘For drawing the city and temple of Jerusalem and paynting towers’, ‘To a woman that brawght her childe to the stadge and there attended uppon it’, and for a copy of the play bound ‘in vellum with the Queenes Matie hir armes and sylke ribben strings’, almost certainly that still extant as Addl. MS. 20061 (cf. App. K), which shows that Elizabeth was accompanied by Cecilia of Sweden.[211] Whether these plays were at the school or at Court is not quite clear. I should, on the whole, infer the latter, but no rewards were paid for them by the Treasurer of the Chamber. John Taylor was, however, paid for plays by the Children of Westminster during the Shrovetide of 1566–7 and the Christmas of 1567–8; John Billingesley for their Paris and Vienna on 19 February 1572; and William Elderton for their Truth, Faithfulness, and Mercy on 1 January 1574. In 1567 also the boys are recorded (Observer) to have played at Putney before Bishop Grindal. I suppose that Billingesley and Elderton succeeded Taylor as Magistri Choristarum. Taylor himself is probably the same who on 8 September 1557 was Master of the singing children at the hospital of St. Mary Woolnoth. Elderton is presumably the same who brought the Eton boys to Court in 1573. Whether he is also the bibulous balladist of the pamphleteers (cf. ch. xv) is more doubtful. The absence of a payment for Miles Gloriosus may suggest that this was given by the grammar school who, like the Inns of Court, did not expect a reward, and that the English plays were given by the choristers, who were on the same footing as the choristers of Paul’s. I am not sure, however, that the wording of the statutes quite implies such a sharp distinction between the two sets of boys, and it will be noticed that Taylor, or his man, was in some way concerned with the Latin play. Very possibly grammar boys and choristers acted together. With 1574 the Court performances end, but expenses of plays are traceable in the college accounts in 1604–5, 1605–6, 1606–7, and 1609–10, and up to about 1640, when they stop for sixty-four years.[212]
vii. ETON COLLEGE
Head Masters:—William Malim (c. 1555–73); William Smyth (c. 1563); Reuben Sherwood (c. 1571); Thomas Ridley (1579); John Hammond (1583); Richard Langley (1594); Richard Wright (1611); Matthew Bust (1611–30).
[Bibliographical Note.—The best sources of information are J. Heywood and T. Wright, Ancient Laws of King’s College and Eton College (1850); Report of Public Schools Commission (1864); W. L. Collins, Etoniana 1865); H. Maxwell-Lyte, History of Eton (1875, 4th ed. 1911); W. Sterry, Annals of Eton College (1898).]
The King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor was founded by Henry VI in 1441. The Statutes of 1444 provide for a Boy Bishop (Mediaeval Stage, i. 365), but the custom was discontinued before 1559–61, when William Malim prepared a Consuetudinarium for a Royal Commission appointed to visit the college. By this time, however, Christmas plays by the boys had become the practice, and Malim writes:[213]
‘Circiter festum D. Andreae [Nov. 30] ludimagister eligere solet pro suo arbitrio scaenicas fabulas optimas et quam accommodatissimas, quas pueri feriis natalitiis subsequentibus non sine ludorum elegantia, populo spectante, publice aliquando peragant. Histrionum levis ars est, ad actionem tamen oratorum, et gestum motumque corporis decentem tantopere facit, ut nihil magis. Interdum etiam exhibet Anglico sermone contextas fabulas, quae habeant acumen et leporem.’
There are ‘numerous’ entries of expenditure on these plays in the Audit Books from 1525–6 to 1572–3, of which a few only have been printed.[214] There is also an inventory, apparently undated, of articles in ‘Mr. Scholemasters chamber’, which includes ‘a great cheste bound about with yron to keepe the players coats in’, and a list of the apparel, beards, and properties. The Eton boys played under Udall before Cromwell in 1538 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196, 451), and it is possible that Ralph Roister Doister may belong to his Eton mastership.[215] The only Court performance by Eton boys on record was one on 6 January 1573, for which the payee was Elderton, presumably the William Elderton who was payee for the Westminster boys in the following year.
viii. MERCHANT TAYLORS SCHOOL
Head Masters:—Richard Mulcaster (1561–86); Henry Wilkinson (1586–92); Edmund Smith (1592–9); William Hayne (1599–1625).