A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



paid the master 20 a year and the usher 10. It is true they also gave the 

 usher a minor canonry, but that was only .50 a year. The proper propor- 

 tionate amount payable to the masters was 630 a year. In 1840 a notice 

 in the school register shows, besides the head master and under master, five 

 assistant masters, Robert Anwyl Prichard, Mr. K. Shepcott, Henry Browne, 

 with Marshal D'Aveny, no doubt French master, and Henry Jones, pre- 

 sumably writing master. On 30 November, 1841, being then M.A., 

 Thomas Evans became head master, with another Welshman, R. A. Prichard, 

 as second master. In 1843 l ^ e head master's old house in the precinct 

 was given up for a fine old red-brick house in College Gardens, now 

 St. Lucy's Nursing Home. Dr. Evans added to it at the back a fine 

 new school and class room in the Gothic style, of which an interesting 

 picture is given in the Illustrated London News of 30 November, 1844. 

 Evans was a man of great activity, among other things a student of Sanskrit, 

 and would sit up till 3 or 4 a.m. over his books and yet be at early prayers 

 at 7.15 a.m. His Sunday holiday was occupied with a full Sunday service. 

 It is no wonder, therefore, that his temper was none too good. An old boy 

 records how 



the cane was used fiercely, such punishment being in no way reserved for great offences. 

 One mode of severer flogging was corporal chastisement at the ' block,' a low kind of desk 

 in the middle of the school, across which a boy was held and flogged. In 1843 or I ^44 

 three boys, I think, ran away. After their capture and return an exciting scene was 

 enacted. All of us, boarders and day-boys, were duly assembled at the new house, and 

 marched down the street to the school, the culprits, I believe, being handcuffed and their 

 coats being turned inside out. After an oration suitable to the occasion the sentence was 

 a ' blocking.' The school being massed at the western end of the room, one culprit, a very 

 powerful Welsh youth, resisted violently, whereupon he was handled by a combination of 

 masters. The contest was exciting and prolonged. When it waxed fierce, and the Welsh 

 boy was struggling violently on the floor, Dr. Evans jumped in the most cowardly way on 

 his stomach. We could not stand this ; a shout of indignation was raised, and a rush was 

 made down the room by the boys, with a cry ' Throw them (i.e. the masters) out of the 

 window.' Doubtless serious consequences would have ensued had not Evans piteously 

 besought us to stay our hands. My memory fails me as to whether the Welshman was 

 flogged or got off. 1 



It was excesses like this which ruined the smaller grammar schools, and, as 

 means of communication improved, drove the upper classes, which used to 

 attend them, more and more to the great public schools, where milder 

 methods prevailed, and floggings, if frequent, were at least administered in a 

 judicial manner. On 28 November, 1846, the second master, Prichard, was 

 solemnly admonished by the chapter on a dispute with the head master. In 

 1850 he resigned and Herbert Haines succeeded him. In that year the 

 chapter contributed 50 a year for a cricket ground. This was in Dean's 

 Walk near Dockham ditch. In 1849 tne ^ school was burnt and the 

 present school, a room in the perpendicular Gothic style of architecture, 

 built south of the chapter-house. Dr. Evans, as he became, died an old 

 man, worn out by his multifarious exertions, in January, 1854, at the early 

 age of fifty-three. 



On the coming of Hugh Fowler, 11 February, 1854, the dean and 

 chapter drew up a sort of scheme or rules for the school, under which the 

 second master came more under the control of the head master and the 



1 Frederic Hannam-Clark, op. cit. 22. 

 334 



