A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



He was also credited with spying and listening to spies, a habit which 

 resulted in 1818 in a rebellion of the type of that of 1793. A certain 

 commoner tutor had extracted from some of the prefects at a dinner 

 given by him that gome of them were in the habit of ' shirking out ' 

 into the town. A particular walk was therefore forbidden, one of the 

 two weekly ' remedies ' suppressed, and the place of ' names' calling ' on 

 ' hills ' altered in a way thought objectionable. On 7 May, which 

 should have been a remedy, a rebellion was organized. Commoners went 

 into college and with the scholars seized the keys, locked the gates, and 

 turned out all the servants but a cook, retained to perform his office. A 

 watch party sat up all night in Middle Gate, drinking beer and telling 

 ghost stories. After breakfast next morning, described as consisting of 

 flour, potatoes and bacon, which appeared in separate and solid layers in 

 a would-be soup, a Canon Barnard, who had been summoned as a 

 magistrate to read the Riot Act, asked to address the rebels. He was 

 brought in and made an eloquent speech from a rostrum of ' scobs ' and 

 ' washing stools,' but without effect. A rumour was spread that soldiers 

 had been seen in the warden's garden, so the door of his house was made 

 fast, in spite of the threats of the headmaster that the fastener ' should 

 be brought on his knees before the House of Lords for imprisoning a 

 peer of Parliament ' the warden was Bishop of Hereford ' in his own 

 house.' A commoner tutor was then sent to the window to announce 

 ' that the Riot Act had been read, and soldiers sent for, but as the 

 authorities were anxious to prevent injury to the College, all the boys, if 

 they would surrender the keys, were at liberty to go home for a fort- 

 night.' The boys, with headlong thoughtlessness, accepted the terms, 

 and are represented as at once rushing off townwards to go home. In 

 the close, in the narrow part called the Slype, or slipway, they encoun- 

 tered a company of soldiers, headed by an officer. The officer was 

 knocked down. But bayonets were too much for fists and the boys ran, 

 pursued and captured by the soldiers, ' the more willingly as they had 

 recently had a quarrel with the boys about one of their bathing-places.' 

 The officer pursued too, ' pricking with his sword one of the big College 

 boys,' Charles Pilkington, afterwards canon of Chichester. Going past 

 college the boys found themselves confronted by another company of 

 soldiers with fixed bayonets. Hemmed in on both sides they returned 

 to college. They were told that twenty would be expelled. Com- 

 moners had to attend names' calling in Commoner Hall. The ring- 

 leaders were summoned one by one before the masters. The senior 

 prefect, Porcher, and Alexander Malet, afterwards Sir Alexander, a famous 

 diplomatist in German courts, were expelled without parley ; the second 

 senior, William Page Wood, afterwards Lord Chancellor Hatherly, 

 ' having gained the prize in each form,' and * being only sixteen,' was 

 allowed the offer of apology. He asked what had become of the other 

 two, was not answered, and was sent into another room. From this 

 window he talked to the others, learnt they were expelled, and at once, 

 ' as a paper had been signed by the first three forms that all would share 



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