The prayer of the head-monitor was heard, Hayward and Grose were expelled, and the Court ordered that for the future the 18th of January should be kept as a holiday in memory of the loyalty the scholars had shown on that occasion. This is the solitary instance in public-school annals of expulsion following an act of disloyalty to the sovereign, and at the special request of the boys themselves. Yet the spirit of disaffection that had crossed the channel did not stop short of our public schools. In the ever memorable Winchester Rebellion of 1793 the Collegers mounted the red cap of liberty, victualled, and barricaded the College. The Wykehamist authorities did not like to employ the militia, as they feared that the mob, which to the number of two thousand had assembled at the gates, would side with the boys. To such a pass had things been brought by the lax discipline of the then Head Master (Dr. Warton) and the undue severity of Warden Huntingford. In 1805 an emeute took place at Harrow. The rising was engineered by a monitor who was destined to become the chief glory of his school-Byron. George III. highly approved of the manner in which the rising was suppressed by Dr. George Butler. It was undoubtedly a serious affair. No Public School has made greater progress in every direction during the last thirty years than Merchant Taylors'. In 1867 the Company transplanted their school from Suffolk Lane to the former site of the Charterhouse. They were thus enabled to raise the number of the scholars from 250 to over 500, to build commodious rooms, and to provide a playground for the boys. Before the change Charterhouse had about 150 boys including the gown-boys, Merchant Taylors' 250. Now there are more than 1000 boys in these two ancient seats of learning. In 1864 there were only six masters for two hundred and sixty Merchant Taylors: to-day there are 25 masters for 519. There is now a Modern Side with an average of about 25 boys in a form. The instruction on the Modern Side includes (advanced) Mathematics, Science, French, German, English Language and Literature, and Drawing; while the Classical Side includes not only Greek, but Hebrew. It may be reserved for Merchant Taylors' to remove what has hitherto been a blemish in public-school instruction-the inability of public-school boys to read German. There is no reason why a boy should not learn to read Faust with the same facility as he reads the Æneid. If a public-school boy reads German, or even French with pleasure, he has (as a rule) acquired his knowledge at home. In German education, the English language takes front rank; in English education, the German language, in comparison with Latin or even Greek, is neglected. The only advantage which Goldsmith allowed "boarding schools" over "free schools" was that the former are not in towns. He advocates keeping our free schools in the country, and would have waxed enthusiastic over the removal of Charterhouse to Godalming. "It may be thought whimsical," he writes, "but it is truth; I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities, contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but even of thinking." What would have been the reply of Dr. Johnson, that lover of cities, had "Goldy" made such a remark in his presence. Certainly Old Merchant Taylors, who have distinguished themselves during the nineteenth century in every path of human energy, have not shown this "effeminacy." Among leaders of thought we have H. L. Mansel, Dean of St. Paul's; among leaders of public opinion, John Walter the second of the Times dynasty; among Prelates, Wm. Van Mildert, Bishop of Durham and Founder of its University, J. R. Woodford, and R. J. Carr, Bishops of Ely and Worcester; among eminent Churchmen, Wm. Scott, one of the founders of the Saturday Review and Editor of the Christian Remembrancer; while the Evangelicals are represented by F. Close, Dean of Carlisle; among writers, A. Marshall, the political economist, and H. D. Traall, whose loss we all regret; among writers of fiction, Max Pemberton; among educationalists, Edward Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, James Wm. Bellamy, James Augustus Hessey and Wm. Baker, three Head Masters of Merchant Taylors'; among explorers, Dixon Denham, the companion of Clapperton in Central Africa; among lawyers, Chief Baron Shepherd, Mr. Justice 1 The Bee on Education. Buckley and J. L. Adolphus, joint editor of the well-known reports of Adolphus and Ellis; among scholars, Henry Ellis, Samuel Birch, E. A. Bond and T. J. H. Marzials, T. H. Ward of the Times (husband of Mrs. Humphrey Ward), and Charles J. Robinson, the editor of Merchant Taylors' School Register; among artists, Samuel Palmer, the religious and poetic landscape painter (whose stay at the school was short), and S. P. Hall; among our Indian Civilians, John Ludlow, publicly thanked for the suppression of Suttee in Jeypore, M. C. Ommanney, killed at Lucknow, C. H. T. Crosthwaite and T. H. Thornton; among soldiers, F. Horn, who commanded the 20th Regiment at Balaclava and Inkermann, G. S. Davies, W. D. Bishop, Assistant Field Engineer at Cawnpore, and many more (too numerous to mention by name) who have served through every campaign in India from the days of Lord Gough to the days of Lord Roberts of Kandahar. CHAPTER XIV. RUGBY. "Let your glasses be full and your voices be strong "Vive la, vive la, vive la Reine! "Vive la, vive la, vive la Reine! "No tourist ticket to Rugby-we only issue tourist tickets to places of interest," so spoke the booking-clerk at Euston. It is probable that on your first arrival you may feel as the poet whom Eton College gave to Rugby town has written: "The place might pass unnoticed-to speak truth As may be seen in England." 2 Once enter the School Quadrangle, and all elements of the commonplace vanish utterly. You are standing among buildings, almost sacred to an Old Rugbeian, and you must be less than an Englishman, if you do not feel the associations of that famous spot. Rugby possesses no school buildings as ancient as those of Winchester, Eton, or even its own Elizabethan contemporary, Harrow. The Fourth Form Room at Harrow, built in 1615 immediately after the decease of 1 Rugby's song "Vive la Compagnie", as sung, with extemporised verses, at the "Old Rugbeian" dinner given by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Reginald Hanson, Bart., (O.R.), in June 1887, on the occasion of Her Majesty's Jubilee. Moultrie's Dream of Life. our Founder is still in use, and will, it is hoped, be in use for centuries yet to come. William of Wykeham's buildings still stand, for the most part little changed since they were completed more than five hundred years ago. Not one stick nor stone of Lawrence Sheriff's original schoolroom remains. It probably stood on the site on which the Sheriff's almshouses were afterwards built. In 1602 the first Trustees of Rugby School, who succeeded the trustees named in the Founder's will, were appointed. They were twelve gentlemen of Warwickshire, of old family, and prove that even then Rugby was no obscure country school. 2 In 1614 Sir Thomas Lucye Knight, the hero of the "deer stealing" incident in Shakespeare's early life, was in the lifetime of the poet appointed a trustee. Shakespeare was three years old when Rugby was founded. The Warwickshire boy might have gone to Rugby, but it must not be forgotten that when Shakespeare went to school (say 1571), the Stratford Grammar School founded in the reign of Edward IV., was the older school of the two. John Shakespeare was then the chief alderman of his native town and naturally sent his son William to the local school, where he received the best education of his time, literally for nothing. In Edmund Spenser Merchant Taylors', more fortunate than Rugby or Harrow, can claim an Elizabethan poet of the first rank. The Founders of Harrow and Rugby were not Royal or princely persons, but private individuals of the middle class. They furnished their schools with endowments sufficient to afford the best education known at that day, to as many day-scholars as country villages were likely to supply. The dissolution of Monasteries had, it must be remembered, thrown into the market lands hitherto locked up in mortmain, and enabled merchants, such as Lawrence Sheriff and John Lyon, to purchase lands to endow their foundations. 1 Lawrence Sheriff, Grocer, Founder of Rugby School, born at Rugby between, as it is conjectured, the years 1510 and 1520, died in his house in Newgate Street, London, in 1569. For names see M. H. Bloxham's Rugby: The School and Neighbourhood, p. 32. |