(From Tusser’s Metrical Autobiography, printed
with his “Points of Husbandry,” 1573.)
In 1548 (according to A. Wood) Richard Mulcaster gained his election from Eton to King’s, Cambridge; but for reasons unknown he did not take a Cambridge degree, but migrated to Oxford, where in 1555 he was elected Student of Christ Church, and the year following was “licensed to proceed in Arts.” Here he became distinguished by his knowledge of Eastern literature, and “that great English Rabbi, Hugh Broughton,” a contemporary, speaks of him as one of the best Hebrew scholars of the age. But the University had been preyed upon by “Reformers,” and many students had to beg for their living. So Mulcaster went to London and became a schoolmaster in 1558. Three years later the Merchant Taylors’ Company opened their new school at Lawrence Pountney Hill (between “Caning,” now Cannon, Street and the River), and made Mulcaster their first Master.
Thus we find Mulcaster’s reign at Merchant Taylors’ began three years before the birth of Shakespeare, Mulcaster himself being about thirty years old. But his monarchy was by no means absolute, and he was not always happy in his relations with the Company. The Merchants probably thought of him as one of their servants, and he, as “by ancient parentage and linnial discent an Esquier borne” (so he describes himself in his wife’s epitaph), thought himself a better man than they. Certainly many of his successors, though unable to lay stress on their parentage, would have grumbled at the terms imposed upon him.
The instructions to the Master are in many ways interesting. He was told that he was to teach the children not only good literature, but also good manners; he was to resign his post whenever ordered to do so by the Governors, but might not depart without giving the Governors a year’s notice; and he was never to be absent from the school more than twenty working days in the year. The number of boys is limited to 250, and these are to be taught by the High Master and two or three Ushers. “The children shall come to the school in the morning at 7 of the clock both winter and summer, and tarry there until 11, and return again at 1 of the clock, and depart at 5.” “Let not the school master, head usher, nor the under ushers, nor any of them, permit nor license their scholars to have remedy nor leave to play except only once a week when there falleth no holiday. And these remedies to be had upon no other day but only upon Tuesdays in the afternoon or Thursdays in the forenoon. Nor let the scholars use no cock-fighting, tennis-play, nor riding about of victoring [sic] nor disputing abroad, which is but foolish babbling and loss of time.” (“History of Merchant Taylors’ School,” by H. B. Wilson, 1812, i, 17.)
The Company agreed to pay to Mulcaster £40——i.e., £10 each for the High Master and the ushers; but Mr. Hills, the Master of the Company, undertook to double Mulcaster’s £10 out of his own purse. Some years afterwards Mr. Hills had heavy expenses with one of his children, and was obliged to discontinue his grant to Mulcaster; which led to a serious disagreement. But there seem to have been “difficulties” about other matters as well. In the very middle of his twenty-six years’ mastership (26th November, 1574) we find the following significant entry in the Minutes of the Court:——“Mr. Richard Moncaster convented at this Courte to be admonished of suche his contempt of the good orders made for the government of the Grammar Schole founded by the Worshipful company in St Lawrence Pountney’s parisshe where he is now Scholemaister; And also of suche his injurious and quarrellinge Speache as he used to the Visitors of the said Schole at the last callinge thereof, refused to here his fformer doings in that behalf recyted, willinge the said Mr. Warden and assistants to procede against him angrily or otherwise as they listed, so as he mighte have a copie of their decree.” (H. B. Wilson’s “Hist, of M. T. Sch.,” p. 56.) However, the “Esquier borne” found it prudent to yield. In the following month (14th Dec., 1574) it is recorded that Mr. Richard Muncaster confessed before the Court that he had spoken “merely of choller,” and promised obedience for the future. Four years later he was in high favour with the Company, for at the Court holden 29th April, 1579, an order was passed by which the Company undertook, in consideration of Mulcaster’s “painful services for near 20 years,” to provide for his wife if she survived him. But this was the only recognition his “painful services” received. After Hills’s grant of £10 a year had ceased, Mulcaster applied to the Company for a larger salary than he had received from them; but this very reasonable request was refused. Mulcaster then urged that he had been giving additional stipend to the senior Usher, and he made a claim for the amount he had lost by the stoppage of Hills’s subsidy. In reply to this the Court voted that he “might seeke his remedie.” He then petitioned humbly, but without avail, and in high dudgeon he resigned his post in 1586, either quoting or inventing the expression, Servus fidelis perpetuus asinus.[82] In the appointment of his successor (Wilkinson) he had no influence, and the dispute between Mulcaster and the Company was carried on, the Company making a counter claim against him for £50, and offering to waive this claim only on receiving from Mulcaster a receipt in full. The quarrel was never made up, and years afterwards when Mulcaster had left St. Paul’s he applied to the Merchant Taylors’ Company for a gratuity and was refused.
So at about the age of fifty-five, Mulcaster found himself out of office. Five years before this he had published his “Positions” (1581), and the year after, the “First Part of the Elementarie.” Why the Second Part never appeared we cannot tell. Perhaps in this country publishing books about education was then, as now, an expensive occupation, and Mulcaster having lost half his income could publish no longer.[83]
Ten years later he became High Master of St. Paul’s School. In 1598 Elizabeth made him Rector of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, but as he was High Master of St. Paul’s for twelve years, he must have been non-resident at his living till 1608. Then at all events he took up his abode at Stanford Rivers, where his wife died in 1609. It seems strange that Mulcaster should have remained at the head of a great school till he was about seventy-seven years old, but there is no reasonable doubt of it; and that he lived to a great age is proved by his wife’s epitaph in which he records that they had been married fifty years. He himself died in 1611, only five years before Shakespeare, who was his junior by more than thirty years.[84]
Though Mulcaster himself has been well-nigh forgotten, he had relations, friendly or otherwise, with some of his contemporaries who are in no danger of being forgotten——Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sydney, and Edmund Spenser.
Elizabeth, as we have seen, gave Mulcaster a living. This was not till near the end of her reign, but he seems to have been long in her favour. This book, the “Positions,” was dedicated to her, and the tone of the letter in which Mulcaster addresses his Sovereign is not that of a stranger, but rather of an old acquaintance, who is sure of a friendly reception. In the fifteen hundreds a very common entertainment was the performance of plays by boys. In the Queen’s book of household expenses we find: “18th Mch. 1573-4. To Mr. Richard Mouncaster for 2 plays presented before her on Candlemas-day, and Shrove Tuesday last, 20 marks: and further for his charges 20 marks.” Again: “11th Mch. 1575-6. To Richard Mouncaster for presenting a play before her on Shrove Sunday last, 10 pounds.” This performance seems to have been continued for many years. In the Liber Famelicus of Sir James Whitelocke (Camden Society’s Publications, No. LXX), Sir James tells of his bringing up at Merchant Taylors’. He was born in 1570 and was elected from the School to be a probationer of St. John’s College, Oxford, in June, 1588. He says: “I was brought up at School under Mr. Mulcaster in the famous school of the Merchant Taylors in London, where I continued until I was well instructed in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin tongues. His care was also to increase my skill in music, in which I was brought up by daily exercise in it, as in singing and playing upon instruments: and yearly he presented some plays to the Court, in which his scholars were [the] only actors, and I one among them; and by that means [he] taught them good behaviour and audacity” (p. 12).