A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



of going to the fountain head and obtaining from the masters of Win- 

 chester and Eton exactly what their 'use' was. The date is fixed to 

 1530 as nearly as possible. For John Twychener, scholar 1515, M.A. 

 1525, became headmaster in 1526 and left in 1531 ; Thomas Brown- 

 ing, scholar 1519, became usher 1529 and retired in 1533; while 

 Richard Cox became headmaster of Eton in I528 1 and retired in 1534. 

 The date therefore lies between 1529 and 1531. While the Eton 

 document 2 is intact, the Winchester document has most exasperatingly 

 lost its first leaf. To judge from the Eton document, it began with 

 a general statement of the hours of school, the arrangements as to 

 discipline, including that of 'prepositores in the feld when they play, 

 for fyghtyng, rent clothes, blew eyes or siche like,' and also for ' ill-kept 

 hedsys, unwasshid facys, fowle clothys and sich other.' All that the 

 master asked of a new boy at Eton was 'what frendys he hathe, whether 

 there be any plage,' showing how the plague was still endemic. After the 

 general statement followed a tabulated scheme of work. The statement 

 as to Winchester now starts with such a scheme of work, in the middle 

 of a sentence, ' Ovide Metamorphosesos the Thursday, Salust the Fryday, 

 with the vij forme, and at afternone rendering of there rulys. The Sater- 

 day lyke as the vij forme. The Sonday lykewise.' Next comes the 

 heading 'the Vth forme,' to be followed by headings of 'the Third,' 

 'theSeconde' and 'the Fyrst forme.' To any one acquainted with Win- 

 chester School or its history this is startling. For hitherto from time 

 when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary up to the present 

 day Winchester has known only three forms, called Sixth, Fifth and 

 Fourth Book. It has been a subject of much discussion whether there 

 ever were any other forms, and if so when the others disappeared. Now 

 we learn for a fact that at Winchester, as then at contemporary Eton, 

 and as at Westminster from its foundation thirty years later until now, 

 there was a Seventh Form above Sixth Book and three forms below 

 Fourth Book. Premising that, owing to the loss of the first page, we 

 only know for certain what the Fifth and lower forms did, the work may 

 be thus summarized. 



The first work in the morning on coming into school at seven 

 o'clock, from Monday to Thursday inclusive, seems to have been 

 the giving out of grammar rules. In the Fifth to Third Forms these 

 were taken from Sulpicius, a schoolmaster at Rome, of Veroli in the 

 Campagna, who published many grammatical works in Latin between 

 1487 and 1506. One of the Sixth Form gave them out to the Fifth, 

 and one of the Fifth to the Fourth, but the usher gave them out to 

 the Third. Form V. did 'versifical rules' or rules for making verses ; 

 Form IV. the rules for preterites and supines ; and Form III. the 

 rules for genders and heteroclites or irregular declensions, all of which 



1 Sir H. Maxwell-Lyte says that the Eton Accounts show Richard Cockys paid 10 6s. %J. in 

 1528-9, of which 6s. 8</. for the previous year, so he must have come early in September, 1528. 



* This document did not escape Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte's eagle eye in his History of Eton ; but he 

 accepted it as applying to Saffron Walden, and did not perceive that it belonged to Eton itself. 



298 



