SCHOOLS 



in his play Roister Dottier, which has been 

 claimed as an Eton product. Unfortunately 

 nearly every date connected with Udal's career 

 has been wrongly given, and many wrong in- 

 ferences have been consequently drawn. His 

 name itself is a notable example of the vagaries 

 of phonetic spelling. It was really Uvedale, 

 Latinized by himself into Udallus, and then 

 adopted by him in English as Udal. But being 

 apparently pronounced Oovedale or Oodal it 

 occurs as Woodal, Wodall, and in all the other 

 possible variants of that form. He was one of 

 the Uvedales of Hampshire, the family which 

 became, by marriage with the heiress of the 

 Scures in the latter part of the I4th century, 

 Lords of Wickham. He was admitted scholar 

 of Winchester in I5I7, 10 * and of Corpus Christ!, 

 Oxford, in June I52O, 101 under the name of 

 Owdall. Anthony Wood asserted, and all other 

 writers have followed him, that he went to Corpus 

 at the age of fourteen. As a matter of fact, he 

 was at least sixteen and a half at the time. The 

 boy undergraduate is a somewhat mythical being. 

 He was paid, as Wodall, as a lecturer at Corpus 

 in 1526-8. With the famous antiquary, Leland, 

 he produced ' dites and interludes ' 103 * to be per- 

 formed in London on the occasion of Anne 

 Boleyn's coronation, 31 May 1533. Leland's 

 contributions are all in Latin ; Udal's, which 

 form the chief part, arc mostly in English, the 

 speeches being each spoken by a 'child,' 'at 

 Cornhill beside Leadenhall,' ' at the Conducte in 

 Cornhill,' and ' at the little Conducte in Cheepe.' 

 Both the Latin and the English compositions are 

 very much superior to Cox's effusion on the same 

 occasion. It is very probably owing to the 

 success of these verses that at Midsummer 1534 

 he became head master of Eton. In February 

 15334. he published Floures for Latine Spekynge, 

 selected and gathered out of Terence and the same 

 translated into Englysshe. Its colophon is Londoni 

 in aedibui Bertheleti mdxxxiii, but the dedication 

 * to my most sweet flock of pupils ' is dated IM 

 28 February 1533-4, 'from the monastery of 

 the monks of the order of Augustine.' This is 

 an ambiguous description ; there were no monks 

 of that order, and whether Austin friars or 

 Augustinian canons were meant is open to doubt. 

 The book was published with laudatory Latin 

 verses by John Leland, the antiquary, who was 

 then resident in London, and by Edmund 



'" Kirby, Winch. Scholars, is misleading. The original 

 entry runs, 'Nicholaui Owdall de Sowthampton in 

 parochia Sancte Crucis, xij annorum in fcsto Nativitatis 

 Domini preterito,' i.e. Christmas 1516. His name 

 luggests that he was born on 6 Dec., Bishop Nicholas's 

 Day. 



fa Fowler, Hist. C.C.C. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.). 



'" B.M. 1 8 A, Ixiv. 



IM ' Nicholas Udal suavissimo discipulorum gregi 

 ... ex coenobio monachorum ordinis Augustini 

 pridie Kalendas Martias, post Natale Domini, 1534.' 



Jonson. Now the latter was a Winchester and 

 Oxford contemporary of Udal's, a scholar of 

 Winchester 1514 and of New College 1520. 

 From 1528, and perhaps a year earlier, he was 

 Hoitiarius at Eton, a post which he left to be- 

 come master of the school of St. Anthony's 

 Hospital, then the most famous and flourishing 

 school in London. Established, as we saw, at 

 the same time and by the same Wykehamists 

 who established Eton, the master's salary was 

 16 a year, with the same ' diet' or commons, 

 livery, and other advantages as had been 

 originally assigned to the master of Eton, before 

 the reduction consequent on partial disendow- 

 ment. So that St. Anthony's was probably the 

 best scholastic appointment in the kingdom. 

 Now St. Anthony's Hospital and School were in 

 Threadncedle Street, close to Austin Friars. So 

 it is highly probable that Udal was usher in St. 

 Anthony's School under Jonson, who was two or 

 three years his senior, and was living next door 

 to the school in Austin Friars. At all events it 

 is quite clear that the flock of pupils to whom 

 the book was dedicated were not Eton scholars, 

 as Udal was not then master of Eton. The sugges- 

 tion in the Dictionary of National Biography that 

 the book was dedicated to Eton boys in advance is 

 unlikely, as in those days they seem never to have 

 got their masters till the place was vacant or 

 on the verge of vacancy. The audit book for 

 25 & 26 Henry VIII, i.e. Michaelmas 1533 to 

 Michaelmas 1534, contains the earliest record of 

 Mr. Nicholas Woddal, as he is called, being paid 

 as Informator for the last quarter of that year, 

 viz. from Midsummer to Michaelmas 1534. In 

 later years he is called Informator puerorum (' of 

 the children') or ludi grammaticalis or schole 

 grammaticalis (' of the grammar school *). It is 

 not until 1537-8 that he appears as Udal. 

 Besides his salary of jio and i for livery, 

 Udal enjoyed the petty receipts (minutis) of 

 8;. 4</. for otiti, 2s. 8d. for laundress, 2s. for 

 candles for his chamber, and 23;. ^d. ' for ink, 

 candles and other things given to the grammar 

 school by Dr. Lupton, provost,' whose obit t as we 

 have seen, 10 * was already celebrated on 1 1 

 January. The boy-bishop celebration was duly 

 kept, 2s. being given to the man who brought 

 venison (ferinam) to the provost on St. Nicholas's 

 feast (6 December) and \d. being paid for 

 ' a skin of parchment to write the names of the 

 officers of the bishop on the feast of St. Hugh,' 

 1 7 November, i.e. of St. Hugh of Lincoln, the 

 boy martyr, on whose day, as the school was in 

 Lincoln diocese, instead of on 6 December, the 

 boy-bishop seems to have been elected. At 

 Christmas, too, there was a payment of 1 2s. for 

 a boar and of 2s. 8d. ' for making the boar's 

 head.' There was a play, 31. being paid for the 

 repair of the dresses of the players at Christmas, 



See tufra, p. 173. 



183 



