HISTORY OF ETON MONTEM 31 



considerable trouble as to the proper foundation of 

 the college. At the time of Henry VIII. the 

 college was threatened with dissolution, but the 

 death of the king prevented it, and its destruction 

 was specially excepted in the Act for the dissolution 

 of colleges and chantries in the rei^n of Edward YI. 

 Amongst the old customs of Eton College was that 

 of hunting the Ram. In some curious manuscripts 

 in the British Museum it is stated that the custom 

 obtained in the Manor of Wrotham, in Norfolk, 

 which belongs to the college, where the Lord of 

 the Manor, after harvest, gave half an acre of barley 

 and a ram to the tenants. If the tenants caught 

 the ram it became theirs ; if they failed to do so, it 

 belonged to the Lord again. As late as 1 747 the 

 collegers hunted the Ram. Perhaps the most interest- 

 ing custom was the celebration of ' Montem,' the last 

 of which it was my privilege to have attended more 

 than fifty years ago. The procedure of the Montem 

 was, according to ' Brand's Popular Antiquities,' 

 that on Whit Tuesday a procession was made every 

 third year to a tumulus or mound close to the turn- 

 pike road, and nearly opposite to the great ' Wind- 

 mill Inn,' which I remember well, as a large old- 

 fashioned hostelry, with immense stabling and yards 

 for more than a hundred horses. When I was 

 there it was kept by Mr. Botham, who horsed some of 

 the coaches on the great Bath road, and kept upwards 

 of twenty pairs of post-horses. This assemblage 

 was called the ' Montem,' from the school procession 

 going to the tumulus or 'ad Montem.' The village 



