Edward VI. founded several grammar schools, the first of which was that of Norwich, but his name is more intimately associated with that of Christ’s Hospital, London (popularly known as the Blue Coat School), than with any other. He died on the 6th July, 1553, having just one month previously signed its charter of incorporation. Christ’s Hospital is without a motto.
The foundation of the Merchant Tailors’ School is due to the wisdom and munificence of the ancient “Company of the Marchaunt Tailors,” which, according to Stow, has been a guild or fraternity from time immemorial. The statutes of the School, which has for a motto “Homo plantat, homo irrigat, sed Deus dat incrementum,” were authorised and sanctioned on the 24th September, 1561.
The motto of Harrow is “Stet fortuna domus.”
The site upon which Charterhouse School stands was purchased by Thomas Sutton in 1611 from Thomas Earl of Suffolk, fourth son of the fourth Duke of Norfolk (beheaded in Queen Elizabeth’s reign), for the establishment of a hospital for the support of poor and aged people, and a free school for the maintenance and education of poor children. Letters patent to carry out both these objects were immediately granted by James I.; the motto is “Floreat Æternum Carthusiana Domus.” For full particulars of these schools see “The Great Schools of England,” by Howard Staunton; and for details concerning the early history of Eton College, and of all authors who have written respecting it previous to 1858, Vols. 1 and 2 of the “Annals of Windsor,” by Messrs. R. R. Tighe and J. E. Davis, should be consulted.
[78] Byron has left us the following recollection of his Harrow School-boy days:—
Ye scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollections
Embitter the present, compared with the past;
Whence science first dawned on the powers of reflection,
And friendships were formed too romantic to last;
Where fancy yet joys to retrace the resemblance
Of comrades in friendship and mischief allied;
How welcome to me your ne’er-fading remembrance,
Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied!
Again I revisit the hills where we sported,
The streams where we swam, and the fields where we fought;