The Free Schools.
Education is, in the British empire, an object of national concern. Our various universities and public schools are splendid monuments of the attention paid by our ancestors to the important object of training and enlightening the youthful mind. The provision made for the support of these establishments, especially in England and Ireland, is, generally speaking, munificent. At the same time, it is not sufficient to afford a temptation to the indulgence of idleness, by the conversion of respectable offices into sinecures. The dignity hence accruing to their teachers and professors, invests them with high authority, and imparts additional weight to their instructions; while the respect in which they are habitually held by long established prescription, gives a powerful sanction to the system of their discipline.
This observation applies with peculiar force to the munificent edifice of the Royal Free School of King Edward VI. which is situate at the northern extremity of Castle Street. Its erection was completed in 1630, the ancient school-room, which was composed of timber, having been removed in order to the completion of the present spacious and convenient structure of free-stone. The building surrounds two sides of the court with a square pinnacled tower in the angle. In the centre of the front is a gateway, adorned on each side with a Corinthian column, very rudely designed, upon which stand the statues of a scholar and a graduate, bareheaded, and in the dress of the times. Over the arch is a Greek sentence from Isocrates,
’Εὰν ῆς φιλομαθὴς ἔσῃ πολυμαθής.
Importing that a love of literature is necessary to the formation of a scholar. Above are the arms of Charles I. The ground floor on one side the gateway, contains a room originally used as an accidence school; on the other the third master’s house, now given to the head master, who places his assistant in it. In the middle story are comprised the lodging rooms of the assistant’s house, and the lower master’s apartment, which for many years has been converted into a writing school. The principal school room, which occupies the upper story, is 80 feet by 21.
The chapel is on the ground floor of the other part of the building, and is divided from the anti-chapel by a handsome open screen of oak, richly embellished with grotesque carving, as are the pulpit and bible stand. The ceiling is adorned with a variety of foliage, devices, and rebusses, preserved from the ruins of St. Alkmond’s Church. The arms of the first and present masters are placed along the middle. Prayers are read here twice on school days, by the head master, who is chaplain and catechist, for which he has a distinct salary of £20 a year.
Over the chapel, and of the same size, is the library, which contains a most valuable collection of books, and in size and decoration is in no respect inferior to the majority of those in the Universities. A half length of Henry VIII. and his son Edward VI. when a boy; a full length of an Admiral in the dress of Charles II. reign, probably Benbow, together with five portraits of head masters, ornament the walls. In this room are also preserved three sepulchral stones discovered at Wroxeter.
A small museum is separated from the lower end of the room, in which are some Roman antiquities, chiefly from Wroxeter, with a few fossils and other natural curiosities. Among the latter, is the dried body of a sturgeon, caught in 1802, in a weir adjoining the island, a quarter of a mile below the castle. When alive, it weighed 192 pounds, and was 9 feet long and 3 feet 4 inches round.
In front of the schools on the town side, is a play ground enclosed from the street by iron railing, and a considerable piece of ground is used for a similar purpose at the back, which opens to the country and is entirely secluded from the town. Two large houses most delightfully situated contiguous, belong to the masters, with every accommodation for boarders. The revenues are very handsome, and are derived chiefly from the tithes of a number of townships in the parishes of St. Mary and St. Chad, and the whole rectory of Chirbury, which were granted by King Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth.
This seminary has been long celebrated for the erudition of its scholars. Under the “excellent and worthie” Thomas Ashton, it flourished eminently. At one period he had 290 pupils, among whom we notice Sir Henry Sydney, whose son, the heroic Sir Philip Sydney, laid here the seeds of that exemplary friendship with the celebrated Sir Fulk Greville, Lord Brook, which he maintained through the whole of his short but splendid career. Beside these, the noted Jeffries, Lord Chief Justices Jones and Price; Drs. Bowers and Thomas, Bishops of Chichester and Salisbury; the Rev. John Taylor, L.L.D. and the celebrated Dr. Waring, received their education here. Nor does the present character of the school fall short of that distinguished pre-eminence which it formerly sustained. Under the judicious direction of the learned Dr. Butler, it is in a flourishing state. Not only do the children of the principal families in the adjacent counties and North Wales, receive the rudiments of their learning here, but also those of many families of distinction from distant parts of the empire. The appointment of master rests solely in the fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge; that of ushers and the mode of instruction is vested in the head master.