This ram-baiting appears to have taken its origin from a usage connected with the Manor of Wrotham in Norfolk, given to the College by the founder. At Wrotham Manor during the harvest-home a ram was let loose and given to the tenants if they could catch him.
For many years later the brutal sport continued to flourish, a ram hunt in the playing fields being attended by the Duke of Cumberland on Election Saturday 1730, when he was nine years old. He struck the first blow, and is said to have returned to Windsor “very well pleased.”
Our ancestors held curious views as to the education of the young, and seem to have seen no harm in children being familiarised with the grossest forms of cruelty. Nevertheless the ram-hunting, after being modified, disappeared before the close of the eighteenth century. For some years, however, its recollection was maintained by a ram pasty served at election time in the College hall. We may regard the indigestion which must almost certainly have followed upon indulgence in such a dish as a mild form of retribution for the tortures which some of those present had formerly inflicted upon the poor rams.
In the early seventeenth century Shrove Tuesday was also marked by a barbarous usage. On that day no work was done after 8 a.m., and, as in other parts of England, some live bird was tormented. The usual practice was for the College cook to get hold of a young crow and fasten it with a pancake to a door, when the boys would then worry it to death.
THE FIRST DAME
Newborough, owing to failing health, resigned his headmastership in 1711 and died the following year. He was succeeded by Dr. Snape, a self-made man, whose mother and afterwards his sister kept the earliest recorded “Dames’” houses at Eton. On his resignation in 1720 the school had reached a total of 400 boys, though some alleged that one of these was a town boy whose name Snape had added to form a round sum.
Under his successor, Dr. Henry Bland, the numbers further increased to 425, one of whom was a boy, always playing upon a cracked flute, who was to be known to posterity as Dr. Arne.
After the South Sea Bubble had wrought widespread ruin the school shrank again to 325. Bland only remained at Eton eight years. Sir Robert Walpole, who never forgot an Etonian schoolfellow, presented him with the Deanery of Durham, besides offering him a bishopric, which was declined.
Dr. William George then became Headmaster. He was a very good classical scholar, and some iambics of his so charmed Pope Benedict XIV. that he declared that had the writer been a Catholic he would have made him a cardinal; as it was he had a cardinal’s cap placed upon the manuscript. Dr. George’s reign at Eton came to an end in 1743, when he was elected Provost of King’s.