Whether a school was established in St. Thomas’s Hospital is also doubtful. There is no trace of such a school in the documents published by Sir John Watney in his account of the Hospital, privately printed by the Mercers Company in 1592. The Hospital was surrendered to King Henry VIII., October 20, 1538. The Mercers Company, whose hall was next door and who had used its church for their purposes, almost immediately, December 18, 1538, opened negotiations with the King to buy it. On April 21, 1541, the King sold it to them for £969 : 17 : 6, an enormous sum, equivalent to some £20,000 of our money, subject to the conditions that they should keep three chaplains to pray for his soul, and also a Free Grammar School with a sufficient master to teach 25 children and scholars freely for ever. This was the origin of the Mercers’ School, and this alone is the reason for supposing that there had been a grammar school in the Hospital before. Until the Mercers allow their records to be ransacked by some expert with an eye open to the evidence as to schools, it is impossible to assert that there was or was not a school in the Hospital. It is strange, if there was, that no evidence has yet been forthcoming of its existence. The verdict must be, for the present at least, that its existence is not proven.
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
THE CITY COMPANIES
On August 14, 1880, the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the City Companies issued a circular addressed to all the Companies. This circular sought information on the various points as follows:
Part I
FOUNDATION AND OBJECT
Return A.—A statement of the date, ascertained or probable, of the foundation of the Company, and of the circumstances, so far as they can be discovered from its documents of foundation or archives, in which the Company had its origin.
Return B.—A list of the charters, charters of inspeximus, and other instruments of a similar nature whether originals or copies, which have been at any time in the possession of the Company, together with an abstract of the purport of each, regard being specially had to any evidence which it may contain as to the object of the foundation of the Company.
Return C.—A list of any trust deeds “founding, regulating, or affecting” the Company, with the date of each, the names of the parties thereto, and an abstract of the purport of each.
Return D.—A list with dates of any “decrees of Court,” whether of the Courts of Common Law or of Chancery, or of any acts of the Courts of Aldermen or of Common Council, “regulating or affecting” the Company, with a statement of the effect of each decision.
Return E.—A list of any other documents, not included in the descriptions in the preceding returns, which “found, regulate, or affect” the Company, with dates and an abstract of the effect of each.