Sir Henry Wotton’s successor as Provost, Stewart by name, took up arms for King Charles I. at Oxford, his example being followed by a number of loyal Etonians. With the triumph of the Commonwealth came a Roundhead Provost, Francis Rouse by name, who was afterwards Speaker of the Barebones Parliament and one of Cromwell’s peers. Eton did not fare badly under the Protector, but the spirit of loyalty to the king nevertheless seems to have continued dominant, and the “Restoration” was welcomed with joy.
Francis Lord Rouse had been buried with great pomp in Lupton’s Chapel, banners and escutcheons being set up to commemorate his memory, which is still kept green by the old elms he planted in the playing fields. All such insignia, however, were destroyed when the king had come into his own, and were torn down and thrown away as tokens of “damned baseness and rebellion” by the Royalist Provost and Fellows. In 1767 the irons which had kept these picturesque memorials in place were still to be seen, but all traces of them are now gone; probably they were torn out at the “restoration” of 1846. To us of a later and more impartial age, the insults heaped upon the memory of Provost Rouse seem to have been undeserved, and there certainly appears no justification for his having been called an “illiterate old Jew.” On the other hand, the imagination cannot be otherwise than stirred by the name of Provost Allestree, who had fought for King Charles in the students’ troop at Oxford and at the risk of his life conducted a correspondence for Charles II. His services to the Royalist cause would, nevertheless, in all probability not have been repaid had not Rochester introduced him to the frivolous king. Rochester had made a bet that he would find an uglier man than Lauderdale, and having come across Allestree, who was exceedingly unattractive in face, introduced him to Charles in order to win the wager. Charles then recalled the devotion of the individual with whom he was confronted, and with justice and good judgment made him Provost of Eton.
Allestree, though he resided a good deal at Oxford, did his best to set Eton in order, and, amongst other wise and useful acts, built Upper School. Owing, however, to defective construction, or to a fire, this had to be entirely rebuilt by subscription a few years later, when it assumed the form which it still retains.
Provost Allestree found the College in debt and difficulty, and the reputation of the school greatly decayed. He left an unencumbered and flourishing revenue, and restored the fame of Eton as a place of learning to its natural eminence. Besides building Upper School at his own private expense, he also erected the apartments and cloister under it, occupying the whole western side of the great quadrangle. It was at the instance of this Provost, it should be added, that the King passed a grant under the broad seal that, for the future, five of the seven Fellows should be such as had been educated at Eton School and were Fellows of King’s College.
A VISIT FROM PEPYS
In February 1666, in a coach with four horses—“mighty fine”—Pepys and his wife paid a visit to Windsor. After seeing the Castle, described by the famous diarist as “the most romantique castle that is in the world,” they went on to Eton. Here Mrs. Pepys—rather ungallantly, perhaps—was left in the coach, whilst her husband, accompanied by Headmaster Montague, explored the College and drank the College beer, both of which he set down in his diary as being “very good.”
By this time the Oppidans had increased to such an extent that they greatly outnumbered the Collegers. In 1614 there seem to have been only forty “Commensalls,” as the Oppidans were then called, although the more familiar term had also long been in use; but after the Civil War they ceased to board and lodge with the Collegers (the whole school dined in the College Hall as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century), and gradually grew in number to such an extent that in the school list of 1678, out of 207 boys, no fewer than 129 were Oppidans.
Zachary Cradock, Provost in 1680, it is said, owed his appointment to a sermon on Providence, preached before Charles II., to whom he was chaplain.
The first Headmaster of Eton of whom any satisfactory account has survived, was John Newborough, described as “versed in men as well as in books, and admired and respected by old and young.” Newborough numbered many who afterwards became celebrated amongst his pupils: Sir Robert Walpole and his brother Lord Walpole of Wolterton—ancestors of the present writer—Horace St. John, Townshend, and many other well-known public men, profited by his tuition. Of Sir Robert, Newborough was specially fond, being rightly convinced that he would rise to eminence.