SCHOOLS 



gaining about Gray's retirement. For when 

 Thomas Home, head master of Tonbridge 

 School, came in his place, Gray took Home's 

 post at Tonbridge. The governors of Tonbridge, 

 the Skinners, a City company of London, the main 

 support of Parliamentarianism and Puritanism, 

 would not and indeed could not, have appointed to 

 their school a man expelled from Eton for refusing 

 the engagement, which all schoolmasters as well 

 as ministers were obliged to take. Gray held 

 Tonbridge School till the Restoration, and was 

 succeeded there by John Goad, who must have 

 been some relation of George Goad, whom 

 Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte interpolates as head 

 master in 1648, but there seems to be some 

 mistake about this. His name appears in the 

 audit book, not as master, but as a fellow, and 

 at the Restoration he was allowed to keep 

 his fellowship on the express ground 14 that he 

 had been appointed before the execution of 

 Charles I. Gray himself was at the Restoration 

 given a fellowship at Eton, and died a few months 

 later. 



Thomas Home, the recorded successor of 

 Gray, wa^ a Derbyshire man, of Magdalen Hail, 

 Oxford, B.A. 1628, M.A. 1633. After keeping 

 a private school in London and then being for 

 two years master of Leicester Grammar School, 

 he was elected to Tonbridge in 1640. In 1645 

 he published a "Janua /inguarum, ' an easy method 

 and course for the attaining all tongues especially 

 Latin.' It was a sort of Bulgaria with 1,400 

 Latin sentences in it. In 1641 he dedicated to 

 the Skinners' Company, the Tonbridge governors, 

 a Manuductlo in aedem Palladis, a ' guide to the 

 house of Pallas,' a treatise on the use of Latin 

 authors. Home held office at Eton till his death 

 22 August 1654. He was succeeded by John 

 Boncle, pronounced Bunkley, as Wood informs 

 us, and indeed so spelt in the Eton audit books. 

 He, like Gray, had been master of Charterhouse 

 School, appointed there in 1653. He was a 

 Cambridge man who had been admitted M.A. 

 of Oxford 22 December 1652, on special letters 

 from Protector Oliver. He stayed only a year 

 as head master at Eton, then taking a fellowship, 

 from which he was expelled at the Restoration ; 

 but he found employment as master of the Mer- 

 cers' School 3 April i66i, m where he remained 

 for fifteen years till his death in 1677, when his 

 son succeeded him. Thomas Singleton, the 

 next Eton master, was the son of a vicar of 

 Basildon, Berkshire, and had matriculated at 

 Queen's College, Oxford, 19 May 1637. He 

 was master of the Free Grammar School of 

 St. Mary Axe in London. 



Provost Rous, after being Speaker of Bare- 

 bone's Parliament, and a Lord of the Upper 



" S.P. Dom. Chas. II, quoted by Lytc himself, op. 

 cit. 262. 



111 John VVatncy, Ike Merctrf Schoel (1896), 13, 

 >5 37- 



House, died on 7 January 1659. He was 

 buried in Lupton's chapel at Eton, which in his 

 will he described as 'a place which hath my 

 deare affections and prayers, that it may be 

 a flourishing nursery of pietie and learning to the 

 end of the world.' His monument was dese- 

 crated and defaced by the ' fool-fury ' of the 

 Restoration. His portrait as Speaker still adorns 

 the provost's dining-room. His connexion 

 with Eton is still living, as he founded by his 

 will 8 March 1675-8 (proved 10 February 

 following) what is now a scholarship of j6o 

 a year for Etonians at Pembroke College, 

 Oxford. The original gift was one of two 

 annuities of ^40 and ^2O respectively, charged on 

 the tithes of Great Bookham, Surrey, and on land 

 at Cookbury, Devonshire, for 3 scholars 'of low 

 fortune, viz. under jTio a year '^-equivalent 

 to about jiOO a year now of his next of kin, 

 or ' failing such . . . then of the two upper 

 forms of Eton school.' They were to study 

 divinity and to give some public specimen 

 of their proficiency therein before becoming 

 B.A's. The University Commission in 1857 

 abolished the preference for next of kin, and 

 consolidated the three scholarships into one. 

 The value of the scholarships was magnificent 

 at the time ; but being secured by a fixed 

 charge, the gift is only one of many instances 

 of the superior wisdom of those benefactors who 

 gave land in specie to provide for their benefac- 

 tions in perpetuity. Provost Rous therefore 

 deserves more gratitude than party writers on 

 Eton history have allowed him. 



After Rous' death, on 14 January 1659, the 

 fellows elected Nicholas Lockyer, one of them- 

 selves, as provost. But on the Restoration a few 

 months later he resigned, and George Monk, 

 brother of General Monk, the traitor who 

 brought back the Stuarts, was appointed on 

 7 July 1660 by letters patent. A few months 

 later he was made Bishop of Hereford, but 

 retained the provostry with it. He died 17 

 December 1661. After Dr. Thomas Browne, 

 the king's nominee, had been rejected on the 

 ground of heresy and schism, Dr. John Mere- 

 dith, warden of All Souls, was appointed 

 February 1 66 1 . He too, was a pluralist, con- 

 tinuing to reside at All Souls, where he died 

 in 1665. 



Singleton, the master, received short shrift. 

 A letter to the Secretary of State, Nicholas, from 

 John Price, one of the new fellows, written at 

 the Cockpit, Whitehall, on 14 July 1660, 

 informs him that Singleton had been removed 

 by the provost and fellows and asks that in case 

 he 'shall petition to be restored (as I understand 

 he intendeth to doe),' the proceedings should be 

 stayed till the college could be heard. If 

 Singleton petitioned he did so in vain. Thomas 

 Mountague, ' who had been 1 9 years usher in 

 the scholc, a vcric worthie gentleman, and 



'97 



