A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



and equable rule of ten years seems to have endeared him to the hearts 

 of his scholars, so much that two of them have preserved his memorials, 

 so that we know more of him as headmaster than of any of his 

 predecessors or successors for two centuries. His 'distichs ' or couplets 

 on the wardens and headmasters who preceded him were preserved and 

 published, together with a poetical life of Wykeham in Latin, in an 

 appendix to his own Latin poems, by Richard Willis in 1573, under the 

 title of Carmina C. "Johnsoni, poetce eximii, scholce Winton. Informations 

 26 (i.e. 26th headmaster), ex cedibus Tottellianis (i.e. published byTottell). 

 These couplets by themselves might have kept Johnson's memory green, 

 but they could not have given us the vivid pictures of the man and the 

 school which have been preserved to us by another of his pupils, 

 William Badger of Winchester, in a MS. volume 1 now in the British 

 Museum. Badger became a scholar at the age of ten, in Johnson's 

 second year, and continued under his rule for over eight years, until he 

 was admitted a scholar of New College, 2 April, 1 569, where he remained 

 till 1574. For the last half-century Johnson himself has been credited 

 with an even more elaborate and vivid picture of the school life in the 

 sixteenth century by reason of a Latin poem preserved in the college 

 archives and published 2 in 1848 by Charles Wordsworth, afterwards 

 Bishop of St. Andrews, then second master of Winchester. He 

 attributed it to Johnson, but the attribution has now been shown to be 

 devoid of external authority, while it is refuted by internal evidence, 

 which points to a date about a century later. It cannot therefore be 

 quoted 3 as an authority for 'a day at Winchester School in 1550.' 

 Badger's manuscript on the other hand is authentic and very curious. 

 It consists of dictata or Latin prose and verse tasks dictated in Johnson's 

 time to the boys, being his model versions of themes previously set to and 

 done by them. 



Badger's scholastic career raises an interesting question about the 

 arrangement of the forms in the school. For two and a half centuries at 

 least there have been only three forms at Winchester Sixth, Fifth and 

 Fourth. Yet, as we have seen, in 1529 there was a Seventh above the 

 Sixth, and three forms below Fourth Book. In Badger's book only 

 Sixth, Fifth and Fourth Books appear. At the beginning of the book, 

 probably Michaelmas, 1.563,116 was in Fourth Book, and so remained till 

 the term he calls ' after Easter,' 1565, when he entered Fifth Book, and 

 passed into Sixth Book ' after Michaelmas,' 1566. As he thus rapidly 

 passed through Fifth Book and eventually got a scholarship at New 

 College, which was given then as now on competitive examination, he 

 must have been a clever boy. What then was he doing during the two 

 years from his admission in 1561 to 1563 ? Was he in Fourth Book 

 the whole time or were there then a Third, Second or First Book 



1 Add. MS. 4379 ; entitled by the binder 'Themes at Winchester School.' 



z The College of St. Mary Winton, near Winchester (G. & H. Parker, Oxford and London ; D. Nutt, 



Winchester, 1848). See The Wykehamist, July and August, 1899, and Feb. 1900. 



8 As it was in my History, xx. 266-78. I had not then examined the original. Mr. J. S. 



Cotton showed the true date in the Wykehamist, July, 1899. 



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