Chapter XXIV: Part I: p. 3) in 1259; “St. Michael de Paternoster-cherch” in 1284; (11)

The next schoolmaster whose name is known was Edmund Johnson. This was the “one Johnson,” of Stow’s account of “the spoil of the Hospital,” which is nothing more than a baseless libel. Edmund Johnson, or Jonson, was admitted a scholar of Winchester, at the age of eleven, in 1514, and became a Fellow of New College in 1522, remaining such for two years, and is described in the New College Register as having become “a schoolmaster.” Whether he was appointed to St. Anthony’s then, there are no means of knowing. Edmund Johnson was a “clerk” in the Hospital in 1522, and perhaps acted as usher, as no usher’s name is given. He can hardly be the same man. At all events he is described as “Scolemaster of the Grammar Schole in the said Hospitall” in a lease of November 16, 35 Henry VIII., _i.e._ 1543, by the Dean and Chapter to him of a house fronting “Saint Anthonies yarde,” being, perhaps, the house which had been usually occupied by the Master of the Hospital. The lease contained a reservation “for the use of the Scolemaister for the time then being,” of “the scolle house and the rome over yt, with the chambre next adioyning to the same schole.”

In 1546, the first of the Acts for the dissolution of colleges and chantries was passed, and commissioners were appointed under it to certify the chantries and their value. They included St. Anthony’s Hospital under the heading of Berkshire, it being treated as part of Windsor in that county.[109] They reported, on the authority of “Sir Anthonye Baker, clerk, Master of the Hospital,” that in the parish of St. Benedict Fink, London, was “one hospytall of St. Anthony, founded to fynde one master, 2 prestes, one scolemaster, and 12 pore men there, perpetually to serve and saye the devyne service and to praye for the soules of there founders.” This is the statement which misled Stow and the other historians into thinking that the school was part of the original foundation. The correct description of the foundation of Henry VI.’s time was misread as a description of the original foundation under Henry III., to which it was wholly inapplicable.

The value of the lands and possessions of the Hospital is put in the chantry certificate at £55 : 6 : 8 gross, with deductions of £4 : 1s., bringing it down to £51 : 5 : 8. The stipends of the two priests were £8 each; of the curate of Seynt Benet Fynkes, £8; and of “the clerk that keepeth our Lady’s mass,” £9. These four make up the four priests we find in the Hospital accounts. The steward received £5, while the poor cost £31 : 17s.; the “sexten” had £2. The schoolmaster’s stipend was £16; so that so far from the school being plundered at this time, the Master was far better paid than several of his predecessors, and received more than the Masters of Winchester or Eton.

The total expenses came to £95 odd. “And so lacketh for the proportion of the same house £40 : 11 : 11, which ys borne by the Dean and Cannons of Wyndsore, whereunto this Hospytalle is annexede [and] unytide.” This is a somewhat slim way of putting the fact that the surplus expenses of the Hospital were met by subscriptions from the public to such an amount, that instead of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor defraying the deficit out of their own revenues, a sum three or four times as large as the whole revenue from endowment of the Hospital found its way into their pockets.

The Chantries Dissolution Act of Henry was only permissive, giving the King, during his life, power to take possession of any chantries or colleges he chose; and advantage was taken of it to enter on barely half a dozen colleges, of which Windsor was not one. In 1547, a new Act of dissolution of colleges and chantries was passed in Edward VI.’s first Parliament; but Windsor was, alone among colleges that were not educational, specially exempted from its provisions. There is, however, a certificate, by the Chantry Commissioners of London and Middlesex, for the parish of St. Benet Finck, in which, while certifying a chantry in the parish church, they say complainingly (the certificates were in fact drawn up by the church wardens) that the Dean and Chapter of Windsor “is parson,” and the value of the same £16, “and but one priest by them found to serve the same, which priest is very unhable to serve the same.” They add that “within the said parish is a Grammar Scole by the name of a Fre Scole, called Saynt Anthonies, the Scolemaister whereof is nowe Maister Edmond Johnson, and his wages paid by the Stewarde of Seynt Anthonyes, and how muche is not knowen.”

Now Stow is said to have been born about 1525. He tells us in a passage which is a _locus classicus_ in the history of London schools as much as the famous “Description” of Fitzstephen himself, that in his youth, which, for this purpose, we may take to be from 1535 to 1545, the arguing of the schoolboys as to the principles of grammar of which Fitzstephen wrote, was still continued.[110]

For I myself in my youth have yearly seen on the eve of St.
Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools
repair unto the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the Priory in
Smithfield, where, upon a bank, boarded about under a tree, some one
scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till
he were by some better scholar overcome and put down, and then the
overcomer, taking the place, did like as the first, and in the end
the best opposers and answerers had rewards; which I observed not
but it made both good schoolmasters and also good scholars
diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the
obtaining of this garland. I remember there repaired to these
exercises amongst others the Masters and scholars of the free
schools of St. Paul’s of London, of St. Peter’s of Westminster, of
St. Thomas Acon’s Hospital and of St. Anthony’s Hospital; whereof
the last named commonly presented the best scholars and had the
prize in those days.

It is very doubtful, for reasons which will appear when we come to deal with Westminster and St. Thomas Acon’s, whether Stow’s memory was accurate when he brought scholars from Westminster and the Mercers’ School to St. Bartholomew’s before its dissolution. However that may be, Stow goes on:

This Priory of St. Bartholomew being surrendered to Henry VIII.
those disputations of scholars in that place surceased; and was
again, only for a year or twain, in the reign of Edward VI., renewed
in the cloister of Christ’s Hospital, when the best scholars then
still of St. Anthony’s school, howsoever the same be now fallen both
in number and estimation, were rewarded with bows and arrows of
silver given to them by Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith.

Now, as Christ’s Hospital was only founded on June 26, 1552, and then, as we shall see, as a mere Foundlings’ Hospital, and Edward VI. died in the following January, there was not time for these renewed contests in his reign and Stow’s memory must have been at fault. The resuscitation of the contests is more likely to have taken place in the reign of Mary when the “old learning” and boy-bishops and the like revived with the “old religion.” However that may be, the school continued to flourish under Elizabeth, on Stow’s own showing.[111]

Nevertheless, however, the encouragement failed. The schollers of
Paules meeting with them of St. Anthonies, would call them “Anthonie
pigs” and they againe would call the other “Pigeons of Paules,”
because many pigeons were bred in Paules church, and Saint Anthonie
was always figured with a pig following him, and, mindfull of the
former usage, did for a long season disorderly in the open streete
provoke one another with “Salve tu quoque! placet tibi mecum
disputare?” “Placet.” And so proceeding from this to questions in
grammar, they usually fell from wordes to blows, with their satchels
full of bookes, many times in great heaps, that they troubled the
streets and passengers; so that finally they were restrained, with
the decay of St. Anthonies schoole.

Strype,[112] in his edition of Stow a century later, gives further evidence:

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.”

The patentees, however, generously offered that if the Lord Treasurer should think “that in passing the patent Her Majesty was hardly dealt with in it, or your zeal for the school to be maintained which is no Free School, so your Honour would procure from Her Majesty a foundation and take the patronage. I can be content there go a better maintenance to the Master, viz. £30 per annum or more, or to do any act your Honour should think conscionable.”

The Dean and Chapter in their answer did not deny that they had diminished the number of priests, clerks, choristers, and scholars in the Hospital, but urged that they no longer got £323 a year as they used to do “by begging,” but now spent more on the Hospital by twenty nobles a year at least than they received. As to the School they said “the Schoolmaster teacheth as many freely as his grant bindeth him unto, for it was never free for all that come thither, but only for the poorer sort.” The schoolmaster himself, Mr. Brown, put in a separate answer. He alleged that “the School was never free to all comers, but only for the choristers of the house and all such other destitute children; as may be gathered by sundry ancient accompts. The Schoolmaster is bound by the words of his patent to entertain 40 poor scholars, whose friends are not able to pay for their teaching, if so many come, and offer their children to be taught freely.” He said that he had never refused any who claimed to be free. As for compounding, that was granted him, in regard that the revenues of the house will neither allow him an usher, nor his diet, as his predecessors had, among the priests. He denied that he was curate of the church as well as schoolmaster, though he acknowledged that having “the lease of the appropriation come into his hands he thought himself bound to do some duty in the church as well as in the school, and therefore entered the ministry the sooner.” “Neither,” he remarked, “is it so strange or odious a matter for a schoolmaster to be a preacher as it seemeth in Mr. Leake’s eyes,” though in this we may fairly say that Mr. Leake’s eyes were more far-seeing than the parson-schoolmaster’s. Then he pays a tribute to his predecessor. “This place prospered well enough under a schoolmaster who was also a preacher, Mr. Edmund Johnson. But then there was some hope that learning and religion might be rewarded; but the daily decreasing and falling away of which reward, as by other sinister means so most apparently by concealments” (this was a side blow at Mr. Leake), “hath discouraged parents to bring up their sons at their book, but even in the Universities also at this day, more is the pity.” He then utters the complaint which the unsuccessful schoolmaster, like the unsuccessful in all professions, has always made, and makes, that there is too much competition. “If there be fewer scholars in S. Anthony’s than have been heretofore, the true cause thereof has to be imputed to the multitude of teachers in every corner both of the city and country, and to the wonted reward of learning, and not to the want of diligence in the schoolmaster there.” Finally, he challenges the facts. “If trial be made it may be that both the number and the learning of his scholars may fall out better than Mr. Leake would have it.”

The end of the whole matter was that it was referred to Her Majesty’s General Attorney, Sir John Pepham, and the Solicitor General, Thomas Gerton. They certified that as the grant of Edward IV., confirmed by Innocent the Pope, had made the Hospital unconditionally a possession of St. George’s College, the purchasers from Her Majesty ought not to molest the Dean and Canons or any of their Governors in the said lands. So Mr. Leake and his friends took nothing by their pains.

Not many years later, however, the Chapter, on the ground that the Hospital cost more than they got from it, tried to withhold payment of the scholarship fund from Oriel College. This roused Oriel to look up the documents, and they counterclaimed not merely the customary £10 : 8s. but the whole twenty-five marks of the original grants and threatened to enter on the Essex lands if it was not paid. Thereon the Windsor Chapter filed a Bill in chancery. Lord Keeper Bacon’s decree, November 17, 1617, founded on an award of Sir Henry Savile, T. Frith, a canon of Windsor, and Joshua Sanders, confirmed the right of Oriel to some payment; but in the absence of any proof from Oriel that they had ever received more, and the presence of proof on the part of Windsor that since they became possessed of St. Anthony’s they had never paid more, the decree was for £10 : 8s. a year only. Windsor paid £30 for costs. The sum of £10 : 8s. a year is still paid to Oriel College by Windsor College, though it is to be feared that not many scholars are now maintained by the payment.

In 1600 St. Anthony’s School must have been in very low water. A curious compact was made by Mr. Thomas Smith, the schoolmaster in that year, with Mr. Thomas Bradshaw. The latter was to come to the school with “a dozen of his own scholars at the least” and to teach all the poor children in the parish of St. Benet Finck “being offered and brought unto him according to the limitation of the patent,” and hold the office of teacher or master conjointly with Mr. T. Smith, taking all the profits of his own pupils, while Mr. Smith was to take the profit on those brought in by him. Neither was to interfere with the teaching or management of the other’s scholars, except in case one of them was ill or absent, when the other was to teach the whole school. The scholars belonging to either were to be placed equally on both sides of the school. Finally, on payment at any time of £10 by Bradshaw, he was to have an assignment of Smith’s patent and place. The Chapter do not seem to have relished this bargain, as there are some notes attached to this agreement as to the terms of the original grant to Smith, which included a condition to appoint a deputy, and to teach free as many children as were brought thither up to forty; and to keep a register of such free scholars, to be exhibited to the Dean whenever required, and it is remarked that the arrangement with Bradshaw was a breach of these conditions. A draft surrender of the mastership by Smith, May 1, 43 Elizabeth (1601), is with this paper. It was not, however, executed by him, as ten years afterwards he is found still keeping the Hospital accounts as receiver and paying himself “pro informatione scholarium.” In 1622-23 William Walker acted in the same capacity as receiver and schoolmaster, and duly paid himself and twelve almsmen and women their stipends. In 1661-62, the latest account preserved shows him still acting in the double capacity, but receiving the augmented salary of £25 a year.

In 1666 St. Anthony’s was burnt with the rest of London. The church was rebuilt after the Fire for the French Church, and still continues. But the school seems never to have been rebuilt, and when Strype published his edition of _Stow_ in 1720 it no longer existed. So ended this once famous school.

* * * * *

We must now return from the later history of St. Anthony’s School to its beginning. It was founded, as we have seen, in 1441. Five years afterwards there is a series of documents which are evidence of some struggle going on in regard to education in London, the exact purport and the result of which are equally obscure. All we know is that on May 3, 24 Henry VI., _i.e._ 1446, a writ of Privy Seal was sent to the Chancellor directing him to issue letters patent, which was duly done on May 6, dealing with schools in London. The letters patent are of course in Latin, in which language they long remained, but the Privy Seal, which is verbatim to the same effect, was in English. It begins by a recital which is almost an echo of the Petition to Parliament in 1394. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London “considered the great ‘abusions’ that have been of long time in London, that many and divers persons not sufficiently instructed in grammar presumed to hold common grammar schools in great deceit of their scholars, as also of the friends that find them to school,” and so they had “in their great wisdom” devised a remedy. They had ordained 5 schools of grammar and “no moo” within the said city; “one within the churchyard of St. Paul; another within the collegiate church of St. Martin; the third in Bow Church (Beate Marie de Arcubus, in the Letters Patent); the fourth in the church of St. Dunstan in the East; the 5th in our hospital of St. Anthony within our said city.” This they had openly declared by their letters patent thereupon made. The King, therefore, ordered his letters patent to be made confirming the letters of the bishops, and commanding “all our subjittes of our said citee “that they, nor none of them, trouble nor impeach the masters of the said schools in any wise in this “partie,” but rather help and assist them inasmuch as in them is. The letters patent were duly issued on the day the writ of Privy Seal was delivered, as the Act of Parliament required. This patent was misinterpreted by Stow[119] as creating schools “besides St. Paul’s” in the places named, only he puts St. Dunstan on the West for St. Dunstan in the East. He repeats this error[120] apropos of Bow Church, which he says was a grammar school by commandment of Henry VI., whereas, as we have seen, it existed before the reign of Henry II. Stow then goes on: “And in the next year, to wit 1394 (_sic_), the said King ordained by Parliament that four other Grammar schools should be created.” It is curious that in all the editions till Strype’s this extraordinary error of making 1394 the next year to 1446 was repeated. No doubt Stow had become acquainted with the ordinance of Richard II. and mixed it up with that of Henry VI. and never noticed the confusion. It is the case that in February 1446/7 an ordinance was made in Parliament about London schools. It was founded upon a very remarkable petition. The full wise and discreet Commons were asked “to consider the great number of Grammar Schools that sometime were in divers parts of the realm, beside those that were in London and how few ‘ben in these days.’ This,” they say, “causes great hurt not only in the spiritual part of the church, where often times it appears too openly in some persons with great shame”—we feel inclined to call Name, name!—“but also in temporal part, to whom it is full expedient to have competent congruity for many causes”—whatever that may mean. The petitioners go on to point out how London is “the common concourse of this land,” not only for Londoners born, but for others who come up, “some for lack of schoolmasters in their own country, and some for the great alms of Lords, Merchants and others,” so that many poor creatures would never have gained the “virtue and cunning” they have without such alms. Therefore they say it is desirable to have in London “a sufficient number of Schools and good Informers of Grammar” (the headmaster of Winchester’s title is _Magister Informator_), “and not for the singular avail of 2 or 3 persons, grievously to hurt the multitude of young people of all this London.” “For where,” they sententiously observe, “there is a great number of learners and few teachers, and all the learners be compelled to go to the same few teachers, and to no other, the Masters wax rich in money, and the learners poor in cunning, as experience openly shows, against all virtue and order of weal public.”

Four parsons, Mr. William Lichfield of All Hallows the Great, Thames Street; Mr. Gilbert (Worthington) of St. Andrew’s in Holborn, suburb of the City; Mr. John Cole of St. Peter’s, Cornhill; and John Neell of St. Mary Abchurch, and Master of St. Thomas Acon’s Hospital, were, they say, stirred to devotion and pity by such considerations, and therefore asked that the rectors and their successors in their respective parishes may “ordain, create, establish and set a person sufficiently learned in grammar, and there to teach to all that will learn” with power of removal and new appointment in the rectors. The answer was “The King wills that it be do as it is desired, so that it be done by the advice of the Ordinary, or else of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being.”

It has been assumed that these schools were set up accordingly. Stow states it for a fact as to St. Peter’s, Cornhill,[121] St. Andrew’s, Holborn,[122] and St. Thomas of Acon’s Hospital,[123] and has been followed by other writers. It is doubtful if a single one of these schools was ever established, except that in St. Thomas of Acon’s Hospital. The very unusual form of the King’s answer to the petition at once raises suspicion. The first clause of it is the common formula for consent to a “private” bill, “Le roi fait comme il est desiré.” But it is followed by the very significant condition “so that it be by the advice of the Ordinary, the Bishop of London, or the Archbishop.” A veto was thus given to the very two officials who, doubtless under much the same pressure, had, only the year before, limited the schools in London to five: of which three were immemorial, that of St. Anthony’s Hospital in an exempt place of the Crown’s patronage was already established with the consent of the Bishop, and the fifth St. Dunstan’s was, like St. Mary-le-Bow, a “peculiar” of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is not very likely, therefore, that the Archbishop and Bishop would be eager to assist in almost doubling the number of authorised schools in London. As regards St. Andrew’s and All Hallows the Great it is practically certain that no school was ever established. The two petitioning parsons of these churches both died very soon afterwards. The will of Gilbert Worthington of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, is given in Strype’s edition of _Stow_.[124] It was made July 28, 1447, and was proved on August 12 following. The only reference to schools or education in it is a bequest of five marks to his brother Walter to put him to school, and 40s. to the poor scholars of God’s House in Cambridge, just founded by Bingham. The inscription on his tomb, also preserved,[125] makes no mention of any school foundation. Neither Stow nor any one else states that there was any evidence of a school at St. Andrew’s. The date of the death of the parson of All Hallows, William Lichfield, is not given by Newcourt in the _Repertorium_, but as it there appears that Thomas Westleigh, S.T.B., was appointed to the rectory, vacant on the death of Lichfield, on November 1448, he must have died some time before that date. No proof of any grammar school having been kept here has yet been produced.

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: