A HISTORY OF SURREY 



to the Lord Admirall and Governor of the 

 said school,' and ' Nicholas Zouche, gentle- 

 man, at the house of Maister Walley, stacioner 

 at the great north door of Paula's.' As usual, 

 we are left in the dark as to the actual result 

 of this appeal. 



There can, however, be no doubt that it 

 failed, though sent out to every diocese in 

 England, as the contemplated college on 

 the mode) of Westminster was certainly 

 never established. 



From this time until the eighteenth century 

 we know nothing of the school beyond the 

 names of the masters, taken by Manning and 

 Bray out of the lost School Wardens' Book. 

 From these it is certain that the school occu- 

 pied a good position in the scholastic world, 

 as the masters were scholars and fellows of 

 their colleges at Oxford or Cambridge. The 

 first three masters, Roger Foster, 1565, Ste- 

 phen Caulfield, 1573, in whose time a new 

 school house or room was built at a cost of 

 £75 i6s. 8Ji., and Mr. Kerton, 1584, have 

 not been traced. John Phillip, ' Schole- 

 maister of Kingston,' somewhere about 1577, 

 dedicated to Sir William Moore a volume 

 of Latin poems, followed by an English 

 verse translation of the golden sayings of 

 Senander, the dedication copy of which is 

 still preserved at Loseley.* ' Mr. Whytyng,' 

 appointed in 1588, was Justinian Whiting, a 

 scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 

 M.A., there 21 January 1586-7. ' Mr. Han- 

 cock,' in 1599, was Richard Hancock, of 

 Gloucester Hall, now Worcester College, 

 Oxford, matriculated 1589, B.A. 1593. 'Mr. 

 Beekey,' 1609, is Robert Beeley," scholar of 

 Winchester, fellow of New College, and fellow 

 of Winchester College, 1 596. He retired to the 

 rectory of Bedhampton in 161 3. Henry Par- 

 ton, 1620, was of Queen's College, Oxford, 

 M. A. 18 January 1616-7. His successor in 1622 

 —Thomas Tyro, or more correctly Tysoe, was 

 of the same college, B.A. 1618 ; M.A. 1621, 

 and left for the vicarage of Alfriston, Sussex, 

 in 1626. William Burton, 1637, was also 

 from Queen's College, and a fellow of Glou- 

 cester Hall 1630. He was usher of the 

 fifteenth century foundation at Sevenoab, 

 under Famabie, a famous schoolmaster and 

 school author of his day. Burton himself 

 published annotations on Clement's Epistles 

 in 1647, and a History of the Greek Language 

 in 1650, and seems to have held his school 

 during the whole time of the civil war un- 

 troubled. He retired only in 1655. 



• Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vii. App. 665a. 

 « The name is given as Byby in Mr. Kirby's 

 Winchester Scholars, under date 1576. 



A very gorgeous document is preserved of 

 15 March 1693, wherein the bailiffs or gover- 

 nors by their letters patent appointed Robert 

 Comyn schoolmaster, on the death of Thomas 

 Rowell. A like patent on 22 June 1702 

 records the appointment of Henry Windsor 

 on Comyn's resignation. 



In 1722 new statutes seem to have been 

 made, as the Court of Assembly ordered that 

 the old statutes should be ' laid up in the 

 chamber,' while ' copies of the instrument 

 under the hand and seal of the Bishop and 

 Bailiffs importing the several orders relating 

 to the Grammar School at Kingston be hung 

 up in the church and another in the Court 

 Hall.' But all have disappeared. 



In the first half of the eighteenth century 

 Kingston had a very distinguished pupil in 

 Edward Gibbon, the historian, under the 

 headmastership of Dr. Woodeson, who had 

 been a chorister and afterwards chaplain of 

 Magdalen College, Oxford. He became head- 

 master of Kingston in 1732, and held the 

 office for forty years. Besides Gibbon, seven 

 at least of his pupils find places in the 

 Dictionary of National Biography : Edward 

 Lovibond, poet ; George Steevens, Shake- 

 spearian commentator ; Francis Maseres, 

 mathematician and historian ; George Keate, 

 writer ; George Hardinge, Welsh judge and 

 author ; Gilbert Wakefield, editor of classics 

 and reformer in Church and State. Gibbon 

 has given his own account of his school life 

 in the Autobiography. 



In my ninth year (January 1746) in a lucid 

 interval of comparative health, my father 

 adopted the convenient and customary mode 

 of English education ; and I was sent to 

 Kingston-upon-Thames to a school of about 

 seventy boys, which was kept by Dr. Woodde- 

 son and his assistants. Want of strength and 

 activity disqualified me for the sports of the 

 play-field, nor have I forgot how often in the 

 year 1746 I was reviled and buffeted for the 

 sins of my Tory ancestors. By the common 

 methods of discipline, at the expence of many 

 tears and some blood, I purchased the know- 

 ledge of the Latin syntax ; and not long since 

 I was possessed of the dirty volumes of Phae- 

 drus and Cornelius Nepos, which I painfully 

 construed and darkly understood. My studies 

 were too frequently interrupted by sickness, 

 and after a real or nominal residence at King- 

 ston School of near two years I was finally 

 recalled (December 1747). 



The Corporation of Kingston conceived 

 that their obligations to the school were met 

 by paying a salary of £^^0 a year ; which, while 

 not riches, was not wholly inadequate even in 



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