313 



#11 a '§tiitx from <§te]pljcti Jucfe. 



In 1747.1 

 By Rev. Chr. Wordsworth. 



In these days, when the rise of a Labour Party occupies a 

 share of our attention, some of those who are interested in the 

 history of this county may be glad to read the letter of a Wiltshire- 

 man " of humble origin," addressed to a man of Devonshire, likewise 

 " sprung from the people," who, like his correspondent, was already 

 rising to some notice in learned and literary circles nearly one 

 hundred and sixty years ago. 



I am indebted to J. E. S. Tuckett, Esq., M.A., F.C.S., Assistant 

 Master at Marlborough College, for the opportunity of examining 

 and transcribing that hitherto unpublished letter addressed by 

 Stephen Duck, the minor poet, to Benjamin Kennicott, the famous 

 Hebraist. 



Kennicott, the son of the parish clerk at Totnes, had the ad- 

 vantage of a Grammar School education in the school of his native 

 town. K. Edward VI. (or his Council, as here in Marlborough) 

 claimed for himself the title of Eoyal Founder in 1554, though at 

 Totnes he gave no endowment at all, and the ground on which the 

 school stood, and the old buildings had to be j;?(}r7( rtstr? by the 

 Corporation from the person who had procured them from the 

 spoils of tlie ancient Benedictine Priory of St. Mary, just as in 

 1550 the property of the Marlborough Grammar School was bought 

 of a nobleman from the spoils of the religious Hospital of St. John. 

 Totnes, however, had subsequently acquired some endowments 

 from a private benefactor, a wealthy lawyer, known as " Pious Uses 

 Hele," in 1636, so that boys, such as young Kennicott, might have 



' Reprinted from the Marlborough Times, February, 1906, with additions. 



