FROM THE STUARTS TO OUR OWN TIMES
When James I. came to the throne, Lancelot Andrewes was Dean of Westminster, and he devoted himself to the care of the school, which, under Elizabeth's endowments, was now prospering greatly. He had this excellent reputation, "that all the places where he had preferment were better for it," and it is certain that either he must have been a remarkable master or the Westminster boys must have been models of their kind, for this is how Hacket, once his pupil, rapturously describes him:—
"Who could come near the shrine of such a saint and not offer up a few pæans of glory on it? Or how durst I omit it? For he it was that first planted me in my tender studies and watered them continually with his bounty.... He did often supply the place of head-master and usher for the space of an whole week together, and gave us not an hour of loitering time from morning till night. He never walked to Chiswick for his recreation without a brace of this young fry, and in that wayfaring leisure had a singular dexterity to fill those narrow vessels with a funnel. And what was the greatest burden of his toil, sometimes twice in the week, sometimes oftener, he sent for the uppermost scholars to his lodgings at night and kept them with him from eight to eleven, unfolding to them the best rudiments of the Greek tongue and the elements of Hebrew grammar. And all this he did to boys without any compulsion or correction; nay, I never heard him to utter so much as a word of austerity."
Altogether Andrewes was a man of great influence and renown both as a scholar and a preacher, so he was promoted to a bishopric after a short time, and was succeeded by Richard Neile, who had himself been a boy of Westminster School, and who, therefore, in his turn carefully fostered its growth. He too became a bishop in three years, and of the two deans who followed him, Montague and Tounson, we know little except that the one was "a person of wit and entertaining conversation," and the other "one of a graceful presence and an excellent preacher, who left a widow and fifteen children unprovided for."
It is Hacket who again gives us an amusing picture of the excitement among all the divines when it became known that Tounson was to be Bishop of Salisbury and that the Deanery of Westminster was vacant.
"It was a fortunate seat," he says, "near the Court. Like the office over the king of Persia's garden at Babylon, stored with the most delicious fruits. He that was trusted with the garden was the Lord of the Palace."
Among those who earnestly desired the post was John Williams, one of the chaplains to James I., and in these words he applied for it through Lord Burleigh:—
"MY MOST NOBLE LORD,—I am an humble suitor, first to be acknowledged your servant, and then that I may with your happy hand be transplanted to Westminster if the Deanery shall still prove vacant. I trouble not your Honour for profit, but for convenience, for being unmarried and inclining so to continue, I do find that Westminster is fitter by much for that disposition. If your Honour be not bent upon an ancient servitor, I beseech you to think on me."
Fortunately for Westminster he obtained his heart's desire, and in 1620 began his useful rule. He took for his exemplars Abbot Islip and Dean Andrewes, imitating the first by carefully restoring the many parts of the Abbey which through neglect were falling in ruins, and the second by encouraging the school. Then, "that God might be praised with a cheerful noise in His sanctuary," he obtained, as Hacket tells us, "the sweetest music both for the organ and for voices of all parts that was ever heard in an English quire;" and in Jerusalem Chamber he gave many entertainments with music, which "the most famous masters of this delightful faculty frequented." To enlarge the boundaries of learning he turned one of the deserted rooms in the cloisters, of old used by the monks, into a library, bought out of his own means a large number of books from a certain Mr. Baker of Highgate, and was so public-spirited that he allowed men of learning from all parts of London to have access to those precious works.
He was in great favour with James, who made him Lord Keeper of the Seal and Bishop of Lincoln, allowing him to hold Westminster at the same time, and though his enemies had much to say on the subject of his holding so many offices, it must be said in justice that he got through an amazing amount of work. Under him it seemed as if some of the splendid hospitalities which had ceased since the days when the Abbots kept open house were to be revived, for Dean Williams entertained in Jerusalem Chamber the French ambassadors who came over to arrange for the marriage between Prince Charles and Princess Henriette.