A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



Young Hutton had, on entrance to college, to pay for a gown, 

 i6j. gd. ; a surplice, i6s. id. ; for powling money (probably for hair- 

 cutting), is. ; for chamber stock, is. 6d.; to his predecessor for glass 

 windows (the college presumably not finding glass windows to chambers 

 in the fourteenth century), 2s. ; while his bedding cost 2 6s. %d. The 

 bedding of two brothers, founder's kin, who slept in one bed, had cost 

 i 2s. jd. in 1397. But their mattress was filled with straw, while 

 young Hutton had 30 Ib. of flock for his. Washing was charged is. 6d. 

 a term. 



Among books bought, showing what was taught in the school, was 

 ' a sett of Ovids,' 5J-. \d. ; ' Tullies Offices,' is. 2d. ; ' a booke of Rhetorike 

 is.,' 'a Tusculan Questions, Cambden (Camden's Greek Grammar) and 

 Greek Testament, 4*. i id.' 



Altogether, while a year in 'commoners' cost 20 14*. 4|^., and 

 the first year in college cost 1$ 2s. J\d., a later year in college (1623) 

 cost 9 6s. j\d. only, clothes included. 



Headmaster Stanley was certainly not very popular. Two years 

 after his appointment, John Imber, who had been hostiarius from 1627, 

 married a widow of a member of the Corporation and set up a school in 

 the disused chapel of St. John's Hospital, at the bottom of High Street, 

 allowed him by the Corporation for the purpose. He appears to have 

 taken with him a large contingent of day boys from college, as Stanley 

 complained to Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, from whose 

 ' Master of the Faculties' Imber had obtained a general licence to teach 

 school. The archbishop at first ordered that Imber's faculty should be 

 'so interpreted and restrained that the said Imber shall not teach within 

 five miles of Winchester.' But the city complained in their turn, and 

 the archbishop on 19 August, 1630, referred the matter to the dean, 

 the warden and the chancellor of the diocese. What the settlement 

 was does not appear. Imber seems to have remained in the neigh- 

 bourhood, as he was given the living of Christchurch, Hants, by the 

 dean and chapter in 1 640 ; and after ejectment during the Common- 

 wealth died vicar there in 1671 or 1673. He probably, therefore, 

 continued his school undisturbed. Thus, seemingly, was effected the 

 greatest revolution which took place in the constitution of the school. 

 The oppidans, or town day boys, who had in all probability constituted 

 if not the majority, at least a large proportion of the school, seem to have 

 finally departed with this hostiarius ; with them, it has been reasonably 

 conjectured, departed also the then lower ' books,' first, second and third. 

 Thenceforth the school was reduced to the scholars, the commoners 

 properly so called, who lived and commoned with them, and such other 

 commoners, ' sons of noble or powerful persons or special friends of the 

 College,' as had in old days lodged in St. Elizabeth's College, and 

 afterwards in the old Sustern Spital, which in the succeeding century 

 acquired the name of Commoners' College, and when rebuilt in the 

 nineteenth century that of 'Commoners' pure and simple. So the 

 school became purely a boarding school, a thing until then entirely 



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