SCHOOLS 



mends dividing them between Eton and West- 

 minster, where the election was three weeks 

 earlier, adding ' that school mouldeth good 

 scholars and of certainer preferment to either of 

 the Universities (for some go to Oxford and 

 some to Cambridge) than this, out of which the 

 issue is always hard and the entrance not always 

 easy.' In 1638 Wotton tells of four Privy 

 Councillors, ' three of them of the highest,' 

 already promised, and says ' the world is nimble 

 in the anticipating of voices.' Wotton died in 

 1639 and was buried in chapel with an inscrip- 

 tion which shows that he was somewhat inor- 

 dinately vain of his mots : ' Here lies the first 

 author of this saying " The itch of disputation 

 is the plague of the church."' His portrait is in 

 the provost's lodge. 



The mastership had passed in 1636 from 

 John Harrison to William Norn's, usher from 

 1623. His incoming is described by Robert 

 Boyle as ' the change of his old courteous school- 

 master for a new rigid fellow,' which drove him 

 from Terence and grammar to history. Norris 

 was probably Puritanically inclined. When the 

 new provost, Richard Steward, an ex-fellow of 

 All Souls, Oxford, clerk of the king's closet, and 

 Dean of Chichester, went off at the beginning 

 of the Civil War to join the king, taking with 

 him the college seal and, it is believed, all the 

 old plate, Norris stuck to his post and remained 

 mister till 1646. No statutable election to 

 King's could take place in the absence of the 

 provost ; but, in spite of a royal mandate on 

 6 July 1643, elections did take place both in 1643 

 and 1644. Steward was displaced and 'Francis 

 Rous of Brixham, Devon, esquire,' made pro- 

 vost by ordinance of Parliament 10 February 

 16434. So far from being 'an illiterate old 

 Jew,' as Anthony Wood calls him, because he 

 was a Parliamentarian, he was of a good old 

 family, and a learned man. Son of Sir Anthony 

 Rous of Hutton St. Dominick, Cornwall, he 

 was a commoner of Broadgates Hall (now Pem- 

 broke College), Oxford, in 1593, B.A. 1596, 

 and afterwards spent some time at the University 

 of Leydcn. He entered at the Middle Temple 

 in 1601, and was M.P. for Truro in 1626, for 

 Tregoney 1628, and for Truro in the Long 

 Parliament. He sat for Devon in the Parlia- 

 ment of 1653. He. wrote the metrical version 

 of the psalms used in the Kirk of Scotland, and 

 other learned and theological works. 



In August the Committee for PlundereJ 

 Ministers and Schoolmasters were ordered to fill 

 up the places of the fellows who had deserted. 

 For the often repeated allegation 1M that ' the 

 destruction of Eton was imminent,' there is not 

 the smallest foundation in fact. On the contrary, 

 so careful was Parliament about the schools, that 

 when an order was made for the sequestration la: 



"* Maxwell Lyte, op. cit. (ed. 1 899), 248. 

 ' Ibid. 



of the lands of deans and chapters as ' notorious 

 delinquents who had taken up arms against the 

 Parliament,' lest the incomes of cathedral gram- 

 mar schools, including Westminster, might be 

 jeopardized, and Winchester and Eton might be 

 thought included, it was on 20 October ordered 

 ex abundantl cautela that it be ' referred to a 

 committee ... to consider of the college of 

 Westminster, the colleges of Eaton, of Christ- 

 church in Oxford and Winchester, to provide 

 . . . that none of the revenues assigned for the 

 scholars and almsmen be stopped, or the payment 

 thereof intercepted, notwithstanding the ordi- 

 nance.' On 4 November another reference to 

 the same committee to consider how to seques- 

 trate chapter estates was accompanied by 

 directions ' to provide that the allowances assigned 

 for scholars, almsmen, and other charitable uses 

 might not be intercepted or diverted.' In point 

 of fact, the cathedral grammar schools, Canter- 

 bury, Gloucester, Durham, and the rest, were 

 so far from suffering from the Commonwealth, 

 that nearly all of them which had been kept 

 at the fixed payments originally prescribed by 

 Henry VIII were for the first time augmented 

 when the canons, ' the drones, were driven from 

 the hive.' As Eton College was clearly not 

 within the ordinance, it never was in any 

 more danger than Winchester, which flourished 

 under a Puritan or at least judicious warden 

 and head master. Nowhere did any school 

 suffer. Even notorious Royalists were left 

 alone, as Busby at Westminster, if they did 

 not openly oppose Parliament. As a matter of 

 fact even deans' and chapters' revenues were not 

 touched until 1644. At Eton the chapel 

 services were of course made to conform with 

 the dominant views. On 17 February 1642-3 

 Cambridge University petitioned Parliament 

 against the statute ' which imposeth the wearing 

 of surplices upon graduates and students . . . 

 reinforced by the canons of 1603," as 'against 

 law and the liberty of the subject,' and it was 

 declared not to be binding ; and on 20 February 

 'the colleges of Westminster Eaton and Win- 

 chester were added and comprehended within 

 the order . . . concerning the imposing upon 

 young scholars the wearing of surplices.' 



It has been guessed that all the commensals 

 and oppidans disappeared because of the Civil 

 War. Thanks, probably, to the fanatical 

 furore of the Restoration, the audit books from 

 1642 to 1646 inclusive have disappeared. But 

 later there is positive evidence that there were 

 oppidans. Mr. Wasey Sterry m has printed a 

 letter from Peter Sterry, presumably an ancestor, 

 one of Cromwell's chaplains, to his two sons 

 who were oppidans. ' Son Peter ' had got into 

 trouble and was advised to ' keep the colledge and 

 not goe into towne. Be with no company, 

 especially in private places. Never be in com- 



Annals, 132. 



'95 



