SCHOOLS 



FIFTEENTH CENTURY HEADMASTERS 



Of the headmasters of the fifteenth century John Green, 14604 ; 

 Clement Smith, 14646; Richard Dene, 1466-84; John Rede, 1484- 

 90 ; Richard Festham or Fescam, 14905, almost nothing is known. 

 Except Clement Smith, who came from Southwark, they were all 

 Hampshire men. Smith was headmaster at the colleges of Higham 

 Ferrars and Eton before coming to Winchester, returned to Eton and 

 died there. Of Dene, all that Johnson finds to say is to congratulate 

 the boys on being able to tread on the head of their terror when he 

 was dead, he being buried on the floor in cloisters. His brass has 

 long disappeared. 1 Rede, possibly a son of the porter of Wolvesey 

 Castle, who shared in the expenses of the reredos in College Chapel 

 in 1470 i, a and perhaps uncle of the scholar of 1524 who became 

 Chancellor of Ireland, was a more distinguished person. He became, 

 in 1 500, tutor to Prince Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VII, who was 

 born at Winchester in 1489. Rede's selection is no doubt a tribute to 

 his success as master of the chief school of the day. Rede became 

 master of Magdalen Hospital 3 at Winchester, and retired on canonries 

 at Chichester and Lincoln, returning to Winchester as warden in 1501. 

 While there he received, on 29 January, 1508,* what appears to have 

 been a special tribute to his dignity the cap of D.D. from a deputation 

 of the vice-chancellor and two proctors instead of in full congregation. 

 In 1520 he became warden of New College, where within a few months 

 he died, and lies buried. 



The last headmaster of the fifteenth century, William Herman or 

 Herman, was a man of greater fame, and has left a book behind him 

 which was perhaps the most noted school-book of its day, and is to us 

 both singularly interesting in itself and valuable as an illustration of the 

 English of the time. Horman is said to have been of German extrac- 

 tion, and to conceal the name Hermann under the anglicized spelling. 

 He is entered on the Winchester register in 1468 as of Salisbury. He 

 went to New College in 1475, and after ten years' study there became 

 headmaster of Eton in 1485, and 'went up higher' to Winchester in 

 1495, Christopher Johnson incorrectly representing him to be 'the terror 

 first of Winchester and then of Eton.' In 1502 he returned to Eton as 

 vice-provost, and died there in 1535, leaving a brass to his memory. 

 But his most enduring monument is his Vulgaria, or Vulgars. 



The book consists of English sentences with Latin translations under 

 them, arranged in chapters under various headings, as religion, irreligion, 

 school, games, war and the like. 



1 What is probably his tombstone remains at the south-west corner of cloisters. 



* Annals, p. 52. 



3 Not also master of St. Cross Hospital, as Annals, p. 228. The masters of the time were Richard 

 Hayward, a Wykehamist of 1439, 1475-89 ; John Lichefelde (see above, p. 6 n.), 1489-92 ; and 

 Robert Sherborne, also a Wykehamist, 1492-1508, when, for the first time for 100 years, a non-Wyke- 

 hamist, John Claymond, a Magdalen man, president of Corpus Christ! College, held it till 1524. 



* Boase, Register, Oxford University, under date. 



293 



