A DORSET WORTHY. 17 



which took place in the early summer of 1685, it follows that 

 he must have been born about the year 1615.* 



Without very much doubt it may be assumed that he was 

 the son of Mr. William Stone, M.A., who, from 1601 to 1639, 

 was " Schoole master at Wimborne," or, as he would now be 

 described, Head Master of the Grammar School there. During 

 the greater part of that time, namely, from 1609 to 1637, he 

 also occupied the dignified position of Principal Official of the 

 (Judicial and Testamentary) Court of the Royal Peculiar 

 of Wimborne Minster, which Court was held at the west 

 end of the north aisle of the church. 



William Stone, the younger, would receive the rudiments of 

 his education under his father's care at the Grammar School 

 in his native town. From thence he proceeded to St. Edmund 

 Hall in the University of Oxford, where he showed himself to 

 be so " distinguished for learning, judgment, and piety (and) 

 so precocious beyond belief in true talent " that, although it 

 was " abundantly his due," his Academical degree had to be 

 postponed for a time because he was not old enough to be 

 permitted to take the necessary oaths which preceded it. 

 In due time, however, on January 6th, 1633, when he was still 

 in his eighteenth year, the degree of B.C.L. was conferred upon 

 him. 



* Foster (Alumni Oxonienses) confuses him with another William 

 Stone, the son of John, of Hampstead, Herts, who matriculated from 

 Trinity College, in 1623, at the age of 17. And, even during his lifetime, 

 he was confused with still another namesake, for a story was told of him 

 and of a proctor, which, if he had been connected with it, could only 

 possibly have happened provided that he had been a Scholar of his 

 College (and that Magdalen, and not his own), at the early age of three 

 years ! ! Advanced in his studies as Stone was, we cannot claim that he 

 was such an infant prodigy as this would imply. (See Wood's Life and 

 Times, by A. Clark, Oxford, 1891, 5 Vols. (Vol. 1, page 478). Clark adds 

 in a note : " Well-known stories are often handed down, each 

 generation attaching it to a contemporary, e.g. , the bursar, who got 

 his accounts 1,800 and odd pounds wrong by adding in the year of our 

 Lord at the top of the column, continues to be told of present day 

 bursars (1891)." 



