Sir Robert loved Eton, and probably one of the proudest moments of his career was a certain Thursday in Election Week, 1735, when, with a number of other old Etonians, he went with the Duke of Cumberland to hear the speeches in the College Hall, and heard a number of verses recited, the great majority of which were in praise of himself. With Dr. Bland, his old friend, who was then Provost, he appears to have dominated the whole ceremony. So much so was this the case that a dissatisfied Fellow wrote:—
’Tis to be wished that these performances may be lost and forgott that posterity may not see how abandoned this place was to flattery when Dr. B—— was Provost, and when Sir Robert was First Minister.
The Eton authorities, no doubt, were very proud of Sir Robert, the first Etonian Prime Minister, and the first of a long series of eminent Etonians who were to shed lustre upon the school.
“SMOAKING”
School life in the seventeenth century was a totally different thing from what it is to-day; all sorts of queer usages and ideas prevailed. In 1662, for instance, smoking was actually made compulsory for Eton boys. This was during the plague, when, according to one Tom Rogers, all the boys were obliged to “smoak” in the school every morning, and he himself was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not “smoaking.”
Eton in the Seventeenth Century, by Loggan.
Print lent by the Earl of Rosebery, K.G.
As showing the school life of the period the following bill for “extras” is interesting. It was for a boy named Patrick, from April 1687 to March 1688, and bears Newborough’s receipt as Headmaster.
| Carriage of letters, etc. | £0 | 2 | 4 |
| For a bat and ram club | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| Four pairs of gloves | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Eight pairs of shoes | 0 | 16 | 0 |
| Bookseller’s bill | 0 | 14 | 2 |
| Cutting his hair eight times | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Wormseed, treacle and manna | 0 | 2 | 8 |
| Mending his clothes | 0 | 2 | 8 |
| Pair of garters | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| School fire | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Given to the servants | 0 | 12 | 6 |
| A new frock | 0 | 5 | 8 |
| £3 | 4 | 0 | |
| Paid the writing-master half a year, due next April 21, ’89 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
The “bat and ram club” was used in connection with an extremely barbarous custom of hunting and killing a ram at election-tide, the poor animal being provided by the College butcher. So popular was this brutal sport, that boys summoned home before the last day of the half wrote beseeching their parents to allow them to remain and see “ye ram” die according to custom.