Their two meals were dinner at eleven and supper at seven, bedtime being at eight. Friday, it is interesting to learn, was set aside as “flogging day.”
At a comparatively early period in the history of the school the tendency which within the last forty years abolished the First and Second Forms seems to have been in existence, no First Form figuring in the school list of 1678, in which its place is taken by the Bibler’s seat—the Bibler being a boy deputed to read a portion of Scripture in the Hall during dinner.
In Queen Elizabeth’s day the praepostors or “prepositores,” as they were then called, played a great part in the daily round of school life. There were then two of them in every form who noted down absentees and performed other duties such as the praepostors of the writer’s own day (1879-83) were wont to perform.
Up to quite recent years, it may be added, there was a praepostor to every division of the school, the office being taken by each boy in turn, who marked the boys in at school and chapel, collected work from boys staying out, and the like. Now, however, the only division which retains a praepostor is the Headmaster’s.
Eton was also connected with the Virgin Queen by its Provost, Sir Henry Savile, who had instructed her in Greek. Sir Henry is said to have been stern in his theory and practice of discipline respecting the scholars. He preferred boys of steady habits and resolute industry to the more showy but more flighty students. He looked on the sprightly wits, as they were termed, with dislike and distrust. According to his judgment, irregularity in study was sure to be accompanied by irregularity in other things. He used to say, “Give me the plodding student. If I would look for wits, I would go to Newgate: there be the wits.”
It would seem that at this time the custom of inscribing the names of noblemen at the head of their division—whether they deserved it or not—still flourished. Youthful scions of aristocracy enjoyed many privileges—young Lord Wriothesley, for instance, who was at Eton in 1615, had a page to wait upon him at meals.
Sir Henry Savile died at Eton on February 19, 1621, and was buried in the College Chapel. He was married, but left no family. An amusing anecdote is told of Lady Savile, who, like the wives of other hard-reading men, was jealous of her husband’s books. The date of the anecdote is the time when Savile was preparing his great edition of Chrysostom. “This work,” we are told, “required such long and close application that Sir Henry’s lady thought herself neglected, and coming to him one day into his study, she said, ‘Sir Henry, I would I were a book too, and then you would a little more respect me.’ To which one standing by replied, ‘You must then be an almanack, madam, that he might change you every year,’ which answer, it is added, displeased her, as it is easy to believe.”
SIR HENRY WOTTON
The next man of note who became Provost was Sir Henry Wotton, who obtained the appointment in place of Lord Bacon, it being feared that the debts of the latter might bring discredit upon the College. Wotton it was who built the still existing Lower School with its quaint pillars.
Izaak Walton speaks of this in the Compleat Angler:—“He (Wotton) was a constant of all those youths in that school, in whom he found either a constant diligence or a genius that prompted them to learning; for whose encouragement he was (besides many other things of necessity and beauty) at the charge of setting up in it two rows of pillars, on which he caused to be choicely drawn the pictures of divers of the most famous Greek and Latin historians, poets and orators; persuading them not to neglect rhetoric, because ‘Almighty God hath left mankind affections to be wrought upon.’”