iiis.”
It may be conjectured that the 2s. by which Turner’s fine exceeded Forman’s was owing to the blasphemous character of his language.
Litigation was a cheap and inexpensive amusement in those days. Thus, in 1535–6—
“Payd for the sute in the lawe bytwene thys house and Mystres Bedell in the Spirituall Corte for maynteynynge of the Torches Master Bedyll gave thys house
viis. vid.”
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Company contained many men of distinction. One of the more conspicuous of these was Sir Andrew Judd, who was Master of the Company in 1533, and on five subsequent occasions. He was Alderman, Sheriff, and (in 1550) Lord Mayor of London. He was also Mayor of the Staple of Calais, and in all his various offices he was distinguished by loyalty and capacity, taking, among other things, an active part in the suppression of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion. He died in 1558, having amassed a considerable fortune as a merchant, and was a benefactor of the Company to a substantial extent. He founded the Company’s almshouses for men in Great St. Helen’s. But his especial glory is that, in the year 1553, he founded and endowed, in his native town of Tonbridge, under letters-patent obtained by him from Edward VI, the famous free Grammar School, now known as Tonbridge School, which has since made good its claim to a place among the great public schools of England. This school is, by direction of the Founder, governed by the Skinners’ Company, in whom he reposed the fullest confidence, not unwisely.
Very little now remains of the original school buildings, with the exception of a part of the Head-Master’s house; the old buildings were removed and new ones erected in 1863–4, to which were added a large block of science rooms, with a library and gymnasium, in 1886–7, and a great hall with another large block of class-rooms and workshops, joining the science buildings to the 1863–4 buildings, in 1894. A new chapel was erected in 1900–2, replacing a smaller one which had been built in 1859, but which was never consecrated, and is now used as a museum. Still further additional buildings are in prospect. Large additions have also been made to the playing-fields. The school is now governed under a Scheme of the Charity Commissioners of 1881, and contains about four hundred boys.
The annual Visitation of the Governors takes place at the end of the summer term, when the doors of the houses in the town are decorated with young birch trees, in a way which I only remember to have seen elsewhere at the old Imperial city of Rothenburg, in Bavaria, at Whitsuntide. On the first day the buildings and property are inspected, and any necessary directions given. On the second day a Latin address, reminding one of the Ad Portas at Winchester, is delivered by the Head Boy on the arrival of the Governors at the School, to which one of the Examiners replies. A roll-call in the Great Hall follows, succeeded by a commemorative service in the parish church, at which an interesting bidding prayer is repeated (see Appendix II). In the afternoon there is a prize distribution in the Great Hall, with the addition of addresses by the Head Master and the Master of the Governors, an announcement of the result of the examination for leaving exhibitions, and a list of honours obtained, which grows from year to year. Three silver pens, respectively gilt, parcel-gilt, and plain, are also presented to distinguished scholars, in accordance with the Founder’s directions.
The inscription on Sir Andrew Judd’s monument in the church of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, is as follows:—
“To Russia and Muscova