A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



one to go home for the holidays, as a young Verney wrote 1 in a most 

 anxious strain 



I desire to let you understand that we shall Breack up on the Whensday before 

 holy thursday. And, Sir, I would desire you to let your horses be here on the 

 Satterday following that I may be going on Bloddy munday, upon which day all the 

 Children and Commoners and Gentleman Commoners goe home and after that day 

 noe body stays but some of the Children which the Warden makes stay here for some 

 notorious action they have committed. Sir, I being a Commoner in the Coledge I 

 can't stay after the time which I might if I was as Mr Coper is. I write this to you, 

 Sir, to let you know that we Cannot stay after the time as you used to do when I 

 was at Bister, but such a thing was here never known, for Gentleman Commoners 

 to be sent for after the time it would be a very Great disgrace, besides I doe not know 

 whether the warden will let me stay after the time. 



In 1526 came a headmaster of whom hitherto little beyond his 

 bare name has been recorded, which is rather a peculiar one, John 

 Twychener. He and his brother and successor in 1531, Richard, came 

 from Wokingham, Berks, where was an ancient grammar school, founded 

 by Moleyns, dean of Salisbury, in the reign of Henry VI. His name 

 puzzled the scribes of the day, who give it the most varied form, 

 Tuechener, Touchener, Tochyner, Touchner. Johnson speaks of Richard 

 with unstinted praise 



Te tua posteritas pro mit'i laudat et if quo 

 Invideo famte jam Twichenere tuce. 



Thee mild and just posterity proclaim 

 I envy thee still, Twychener, thy fame. 



The elder brother he seems to have looked on as more of a parson 

 than a schoolmaster 



Grammaticen, Tivickenere, licet docuisse feraris, 

 Summa tamen studli pagina sacra fuit. 



Twychener taught grammar, so 'tis said, 

 But 'twas theology he chiefly read. 



Yet by a curious piece of fortune we know more about what he 

 taught as a master than any of his predecessors or than any of his 

 successors until we come to Christopher Johnson himself. 



A most interesting discovery has now to be related. This is nothing 

 less than the curriculum of the two chief schools in England in the year 

 1530. In 1525 the foundation ordinance of the grammar school of Saf- 

 fron Walden in Essex was made by the sister and heiress of the founder, 

 John Leche, vicar of the parish, who may perhaps be the John Leche 

 who was scholar of Winchester in 1445. He in 1514" had founded, or 

 rather procured a legal licence for, the brotherhood or gild of the Trinity 

 in the parish church, and had intended that the priest of the gild should 

 also 'teach children in the said town their grammar freely (i.e. gratis) 

 and others that would resort there,' but, dying, he 'referred the ordering 

 of the said priest to Dame Johanna (Jane) Bradbury,' his sister. She pro- 

 cured a licence in mortmain, dated 24 August, 1522, for the foundation of 

 a school in ' Cheping Walden,' as Saffron Walden was then called, and 



1 W. T. Warner's Winchetter, p. 36. * Charity Com. Rep. xxxii. i. 803. 



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