This school kept equal credit with that of Paul’s; both which had the greatest reputation in the city in former times. I meet[[113]] with a merry retainer at Queen Elizabeth’s Court, giving an account of the great entertainment she had in her progress, anno 1575, at Kenilworth Castle by the Earl of Leicester: “I went to school forsooth both at Polles and also at St. Antoniez! In the 5th form past Æsop’s fables, I wiz; read Terence, ‘Vos, isthœc intro auferte,’ and began with my Virgil ‘Tityre tu patulae.’ I could [i.e. knew] my Rules: and could construe and pars with the best of them.”
Strype tells us also how this school used at a certain time of the year to go in procession. “Thus I find in the year 1562 on the 15th day of September there set out from Mile End 200 children of this St. Anthonies School, all well be-seen, and so along through Algate down Cornhill to the Stocks and so to the Freer Austins, with streamers and flags and drums beating. And after, every child went home to their fathers and friends.” This September outing was an old custom in schools. It was for a nut gathering. It appears in the accounts of St. Anthony’s on September 3, 1510, when “a sporting day in the cuntre” cost “the Hospital” 18d., the almsmen and choristers being entertained at home for 7d. William Malim mentions it as one of the Eton holidays in 1560; indeed, the drums and flags strongly suggest the Eton “montem.” Payments for such an outing occur frequently in the accounts of Winchester College. It forms the subject of a “theme” at Winchester by Christopher Johnson, Headmaster in 1560-70. As late as 1711[[114]] “nutting-money” was one of the regular payments exacted from Winchester scholars.
Stow’s story of the suppression of the street-shows of the scholars is borne out by the curious injunction issued by the Lord Mayor on August 20, 1561.[[115]]
Item, yt was agreyd that precepts shall forthewith be made to every one of my maisters the Aldermen for the stayinge of all skolemaysters and teacher of youthe within this cytye from makynge of eny more musters or commen and open shewes of theyr skollers, within the said cyttye or without, in ryche apparrell or otherwyse, eyther on horseback or on foote, upon payne of imprysonment.
Edmund Johnson above mentioned became a Canon of Windsor in 1560 and apparently died in 1562.[[116]] So that the school was in fact at the height of its fame and success under the very man whom Stow accuses of having ruined it. Its fame and greatness outlived its so-called spoiler. Edmund Johnson, so far from being considered a spoiler of school, ought to be enrolled among the many great schoolmasters whom Winchester produced, along with Christopher Johnson, the witty Latin poet, who ruled over Winchester itself at the same time (1558-68) and was perhaps a relation.
Among the archives of St. Paul’s Cathedral is a stray account of St. Anthony’s Hospital for the year 1564, and it shows both almshouse and school going on; the twelve almspeople duly receiving their shilling a week and the “Instructor of the school (scolarum) in grammar” his due stipend of £16 a year.
After Johnson’s departure a fall may have taken place in the character of the school, but if so, that was not his fault. Strype indeed goes out of his way to correct Stow, and carefully tells us[[117]] that “it was in being in Elizabeth’s time when one Hilton a great and good man was master.” He must have succeeded Johnson. In 1584 another master, Thomas Browne, was schoolmaster and receiver of the Hospital, as one of his accounts[[118]] remaining shows. He duly paid twelve almsfolk 7s. a week and his own wages £16, besides £1 for himself as receiver.
Even as to its then state and the state of the Hospital itself, there is reason to believe that Stow’s information was wrong and was probably derived from a tainted source. For in 1590 a determined attack on the Hospital was made by one of the band of informers who infested the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. It was a favourite device for some speculative attorney or money-lender to hunt up old monastic or chantry lands, allege that they had been confiscated to the Crown under the Acts for the dissolution of monasteries or of chantries, as the case might be, but had been concealed from it by the tenants, or other holders; and to obtain a grant from the Crown of such concealed lands by letters patent. Sometimes these patents were in the form of roving commissions for concealed lands over whole counties, sometimes for all the possessions of specific monasteries or chantries, sometimes for specific lands belonging to such foundations. The Crown in any case gained the cash paid down for the grant. The informer, if he recovered the whole property, made an enormous gain. More often he only levied blackmail on the proprietor, who was glad for a moderate payment to escape the trouble and vexation of a law suit, with the Crown as nominal plaintiff. The practice went on as late as 1620, when a too determined attack on the chantry lands of the City Livery Companies induced the Companies to combine and pay the Crown a sum down for quiet possession of the lands and for an Act of Parliament which stopped all further proceedings for concealed lands. The facts of the St. Anthony’s case are these:—
In 1589 Edward Wymarke and John Leake obtained from Queen Elizabeth a grant by letters patent of all the lands of St. Anthony’s Hospital, as lands which had properly passed to the Crown, but had been “concealed” by the Dean and Chapter of Windsor.
They then brought an action for ejectment in the Queen’s Bench against Timothy Lucy, gentleman, and Thomas Cooper, farmers of the manors of Valence Galant and Easthall and other lands in Essex. The Dean and Chapter took counter action by a Bill on the Equity side of the Court of Exchequer to restrain further proceedings in the ejectment. Leake alleged that the Dean and Chapter “compounded with the poor and put them out of their houses, and others that would not remain in a corner there until their end.” The church was shut up and “so remained until it was appointed to the French nation, long in Her Majesty’s time.” “The School was no more a Free School; but the Master had £16 per annum allowed him, and compounded with the parents of the children to be taught there, at his pleasure; and now of late the curate of the parish church is farmer of the parsonage and master of the school and a preacher abroad, and by reason of his other calling there are now very few scholars, the master not employed, a bad room to dwell in and a school in name, but not free or of credit.”