Christ’s Hospital has produced some very eminent men, but whether by virtue of its system or in spite of it, I hardly venture to say. The biographer of the author of Elia tells us what books his distinguished friend read at school; how little he learned, Lamb himself seems to suggest in that paper on “The Old and the New Schoolmaster.”
The origin of Merchant Taylors’ School is thus described by Wilson:—
“Towards the close of the year 1560, or early in the following spring, the Merchant Taylors’ Company conceived the laudable design of founding a grammar school; and part of the manor of the Rose, in the parish of St. Lawrence-Pountney (a mansion which had successively belonged to the Duke of Buckingham, the Marquis of Exeter, and the Earls of Sussex), seeming eligible for the purpose, Mr. Richard Hills, a leading member of the court, generously contributed the sum of five hundred pounds towards the purchase of it; but the institution was not thoroughly organised till the 24th September 1561, on which day the statutes were framed and a schoolmaster chosen.”
With the statutes I have no farther concern than with the clause which directs that the two hundred and fifty scholars, to which the school was limited, were “to be taught in manner & forme as is afore devised & appointed. But first see that they can the catechisme in English or Latyn, & that every of the said two hundred & fifty schollers can read perfectly & write competently, or els lett them not be admitted in no wise.”
It is rather curious that the hours of attendance were originally from seven till eleven A.M. and from one till five P.M., and that in winter the boys were to bring no candles of tallow, but candles of wax. This was following the statutes of Dean Colet. Thrice in the day there were prayers; but instead of one of the sixth form saying them for the rest, as was subsequently customary, each boy seems at first to have prayed for himself.
The printed form usually employed was brief enough, and not, like the Manual prepared by Bishop Ken for Winchester, adapted for the use of “all other devout Christians.”
The staff consisted at the outset of a head-master and three ushers, whose united emoluments were forty pounds a year, and the first chief teacher of the school was Richard Mulcaster. It appears that the earliest Probation-Day, as it was termed, was in November 1564, when Dean Nowell and others examined the ushers and the boys with a very gratifying result. These appositions were renewed in 1565, and probably still continue from year to year. They commenced in 1564 at eight o’clock in the morning, and so they did in my time. The practice of visitation by the Court on this day seems to have ceased in 1606.
Alderman Sir Thomas White, some time subsequently to the foundation of the school by the Company, augmented the endowment, so as to enable the institution to develop itself, and enlarge its sphere of utility in connection with Oxford University and in other ways. White was a member of the Court when the scheme was adopted, but he was not, strictly speaking, as he has been usually termed and considered, the founder of Merchant Taylors’.
We do not arrive, meanwhile, at any clear or complete notion of the books which were used at the school, but it is to be inferred that Lily’s Grammar was the Latin text-book. In the rules made for Probation-Day in 1606-7, I find Æsop’s Fables in Greek, Tully’s Epistles, and the Dialogues of Corderius named as works in which the boys were to be tested. The subjects taken on this day were Greek, Latin, and dictation, writing being necessarily included. Neither Hebrew, nor arithmetic, nor the mathematics are enumerated; there are the six forms, but no monitors or prompters.
The School’s Probation presents itself for the first time as a printed production, or at least as something compiled in book form, under the date of 1608. It is printed entire by Wilson; but he does not state, nor do I know, what original, whether printed or not, he employed.