SCHOOLS 



The provest and Felowes, with other stipendariet^ enough to obtain an exemption of the universi- 



*.t___'J__fl til .1 !!* 1 f_ 



of the seid college, had by the old foundacions, for 

 their stipendcs as folowith, that is to saye, the provest, 

 75 ; 10 felowes, euery of theym, 10, 100 ; 10 

 chiplayncs, euery of theym, loot., 50 ; the scoole 

 master, 16 ; the ussher, 6 I 3'. 4</. ; 10 conductes, 

 wherof one is an organe player, and hii stipend by 

 ycare, 6, to 3 others at 4 the pece, 12 ; to the 

 clerke of the revestre, 66s. 8</. ; the parish clerke, 

 66s. 8</. ; And 4 other clerkes at 40;. the pece, % ; 

 in alle, 280 61. 8^. 



Of the which tome, the seid college doth paye 

 for like stipendes at this present, u apperith be- 

 fore, in the tide of the Valour of the College, but 

 121 ; for rewards to the vice provest and other, 

 14. ; And for keping of 5 obbites, 14 01. 4^. ; in 

 all, 149 o/. \J. ; bicause that moche of their londes 

 was takyn from theym and given to Wyndisour 

 College by Kynge Edwarde the 4th. 



It may be noted that the income of 370 in 

 1467 had now grown to over 1,000 a year, 

 yet, except for the lands given by Bost, Lupton, 

 and others for abiti, and the lands gained on the ex- 

 change for St. James's Hospital, under 100 a year 

 in all, the items which produced it were practi- 

 cally the same. But there had been a continual 

 ' unearned increment * in the rents and profits 

 derived from them; a remarkable testimony to 

 the growth of population and of wealth under 

 the Tudors. The enormous amount of plate 

 and ornaments shows that Edward IV could not 

 have plundered the college of much, if of any of 

 it ; and, though he had taken some of the lands, he 

 had left it one of the richest colleges in the king- 

 dom, with nearly 1 ,000 a year, some 1 0,000 of 

 our money, richer than Winchester. Curiously 

 enough the same proportion applies now, Win- 

 chester having roughly 20,000 and Eton some 

 33,000 a year, from endowments. Whether 

 Henry VIII ever seriously contemplated ' enter- 

 ing on ' the universities, with their adjuncts 

 Winchester and Eton, and disendowing and dis- 

 establishing them, we do not know. Anyhow 

 he died before he had entered on more than a 

 dozen colleges and chantries, and the Chantries 

 Act, being permissive and for his life only, ex- 

 pired with him. But in view of the Act we 

 may imagine that Etonians must have warmly 

 welcomed the corpse of the king as it passed 

 through Eton on its way to Windsor, January 

 though it was, when ' along the churchyard wal 

 were the Bishop Carlisle, the Provost, in ptntifi- 

 ca/ibus, and al the fellows and masters in thair 

 best ornaments and copes ; and by them, al the 

 young children, Scolers of the college, in their 

 white surplices, bareheaded, holding in one hand 

 tapers and in the other bookes, saying the 7 

 psalms ; and as the corps came by, kneeled and 

 censed it, saying De profundh and other prayers.' 



When the new Chantries Act, which abso- 

 lutely dissolved all colleges and chantries from 

 Easter 1 548, was passed in the first Parliament of 

 Edward VI, the friends of learning were strong 



ties and university colleges, and as an integral 

 part of Oxford, Winchester, and of Cambridge, 

 Eton. So they, with the royal college of Windsor 

 and its annex, the collegiate church of Wolver- 

 hampton, alone of all the 200 to 250 colleges in 

 the kingdom, were saved from ruin. All the 

 endowments of the other grammar schools at- 

 tached to other colleges or collegiate churches 

 were confiscated ; and though directions were 

 given in the Act for the continuance and the re- 

 endowment of the schools, many of them disap- 

 peared, or most were left to languish on the net 

 annual income received by the master at the 

 time. All the other grammar schools which 

 were not, like Archbishop Holgate's three foun- 

 dations in Yorkshire, wholly independent of any 

 connexion with colleges, hospitals, chantries, or 

 gilds, shared the same fate. About half a dozen, 

 like Berkhampstead and Pocklington, 1 " were 

 refounded by Act of Parliament, and some thirty 

 were refounded and re-endowed by charter, as 

 King Edward the Sixth's Grammar Schools. Of 

 all the hundreds of grammar schools which 

 flourished in England before 1548, Winchester 

 and Eton colleges alone were left in full posses- 

 sion of their property, samples to posterity of 

 what the English schools might have been if 

 they had not been plundered by Edward VI and 

 his advisers. 



Under the new regime Aldrich was soon in- 

 duced to resign his provostry, which he had no 

 business to hold with his bishopric. Thomas 

 Smith, though ' not priste or doctor of divinitie 

 or otherwise qualyfied as your statutes dothe re- 

 quyre,' as a letter under the Privy Seal dated on 

 Christmas Day 1547 informed the fellows, was 

 ordered to be elected provost, and on 30 Decem- 

 ber was duly admitted by the Bishop of Lincoln. 117 



The day before letters patent had authorized 

 him to hold the provostry with a prebend at 

 Lincoln and the rectory of Everington, which he 

 already enjoyed, and any other preferments. A 

 week later he was made Dean of Carlisle. All 

 these preferments might be and were often held 

 by laymen under the old regime of papal dis- 

 pensations ; Reginald Pole, for instance, was 

 Dean of Wimborne Minster at the age of fifteen. 

 Smith was also allowed to marry, and soon pre- 

 sented the first lady provost to the college. As, 

 however, he was made Secretary of State and 

 knighted, neither he nor she can have seen much 

 of Eton, though ' the Master,' as they called him, 

 had a ' new seller ' and ' a new kitchen ' built 

 for himself. He has been credited with the 



1M V.C.H. Hertt. ii ; V.C.H. Ytrki. i. 



117 Eton Audit. R. Solutii M Whytbye afferent! 

 litteras regie majestatis pro electione novi Prepositi, 

 tot.'; 26 Dec. 'solutis Magistro Goldwyn Vice- 

 Preposito et M Willyat equitantibut ad D. Episco- 

 pum Lincolnienscm pro admissionc novi Prepositi, 



187 



