A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



and not like other boys, a butt for practical jokes rather than an object of fear. Some 

 of the bolder juniors resolved to try their strength with him, and when one day he 

 called for fagging in the hall a spirited and popular junior boy, he found himself defied . 

 When he attempted by the usual means to enforce his authority, the whole mass of 

 juniors rose in rebellion, rushing upon him, springing upon his neck, and clinging to his 

 legs and arms, so as to make it difficult enough for him, even with the assistance of his 

 weaker colleagues (he was himself able-bodied enough, but unskilful in all bodily 

 exercises) to get out of the hall without suffering worse damage than the loss of his 

 coat tails. 



The rebels had a real grievance namely, whether boys in a particular 

 form were or were not liable to be fagged in hall. At Winchester the 

 remedy was found by increasing the number of prefects to twelve, two 

 more than the number in ' full power ' in college. Lord Selborne gives an 

 interesting account of the education in his day. The relics of the old 

 rhetoric and sophistry still survived in ' Declamations.' * Three boys 

 were appointed, two to maintain or contradict, and the third to leave in 

 doubt a thesis proposed to them, in Latin prose of their own composition, 

 which they recited publicly in the school. A dull performance it almost 

 always was.' 



The obvious reform of having the Declamations in English did not 

 occur to the scholastic mind, and this useful engine of education is now 

 abandoned. Classics did not exclude general information however. There 

 were ' gatherings ' ' English notes compiled or collected by ourselves on 

 certain portions of our school lessons, the choice of matter and manner 

 being left entirely to our own taste and discretion. This exercise (which 

 I always found interesting) led us to search for information on the subjects 

 of which we had been reading, wherever we could find it in books acces- 

 sible to us.' 



' Standing-up,' practised in the Middle and Junior Parts (Fifth Book), 

 consisting in lengthened repetitions from Latin and Greek books, as in 

 full vigour. Lord Selborne mentions one boy who took up the whole 

 flLneid, and passed successfully ' through every test of his memory or his 

 intelligence which the second master thought fit to impose,' for the book 

 taken up had to be construed and understood as well as known by heart. 



The most wonderful case was that of Henry Butler, a younger son of the then 

 Earl of Carrick, who afterwards went into the army, acquired early fame by the heroic 

 defence of Silistria, and was among the gallant Wykehamists who died in the Crimean 

 War. He took up and passed well in all Homer's ' Iliad.' 



A very brilliant set the 'commoner prefects' of the 1827 rebellion 

 turned out to be. Three of them Roundell Palmer, afterwards Earl 

 Selborne, Lord Chancellor ; Robert Lowe, afterwards Viscount Sher- 

 brooke ; and Edward Cardwell, afterwards Viscount Cardwell left their 

 mark permanently on the institutions of the country over which as 

 Cabinet Ministers in Mr. Gladstone's first Ministry they presided. 



4 NEW COMMONERS ' 



Gaffer Williams retired from the headmastership in 1835, and 

 five years later became warden of New College in succession to P. N. 



358 



