SCHOOLS 



9 November he chose the latter alternative, 

 and the Rev. William Jephson was elected in 

 his place. On 7 May 1734 the Governors 

 examined the school and ' found the govern- 

 ment and management thereof to be regular 

 and good.' But on 23 April 1735 complaint 

 was made by the master of the irregularity of 

 attendance of the free boys and their refusal 

 to supply books or pay for those supplied by 

 him. The parents were warned. Next year, 

 7 May 1736, Charles James Homey, having 

 ' frequently played truant and seduced others 

 of his schoolfellows to do the same and after 

 due admonition and correction proves incor- 

 rigible; it is ordered that he be forthwith 

 dismissed and that this order be publickly 

 read in the school.' Two other free scholars 

 were suspended for the same cause in 1748, 

 one being afterwards expelled, and others 

 in 1750 and 1751. In 1741 Jephson was 

 allowed by the Governors to accept the 

 livings of St. Clement, Eastcheap, and St. 

 Martin's, Orgar. He held the school for 

 another twenty years, and on his death was 

 succeeded, 23 July 1761, by his son Thomas, 

 who had been educated under his father in 

 Camberwell School and afterwards was at 

 St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1788 the 

 Governors set down the money spent on 

 repairs from 1747 to that date as amounting 

 to £2,574, ^^^ recorded that the Jephsons 

 had therefore ' been great benefactors to the 

 School and we trust that this consideration 

 will weigh with the Governors who may 

 succeed us and that in the choice of a master 

 it will induce them to give a preference . . . 

 to a son or other relation of the said Thomas 

 Jephson.' The minutes on this occasion 

 were signed by Samuel St. Davids, i.e. Samuel 

 Horsley, rector of Newington, Bishop-elect 

 of St. Davids, the vicar of Camberwell, the 

 rector of St. Olave's, Southwark, and the 

 churchwardens of Camberwell. For many 

 years before and after this, the only Governors 

 who ever attended meetings were the vicar 

 and churchwardens of Camberwell. The last 

 appearances of hereditary Governors were 

 those of 26 November 1716, of Edward 

 Scott, and 9 November 1733, Francis 

 Bowyer. We have some evidence as to the 

 flourishing condition of the school under 

 Thomas Jephson. The following is extracted 

 from a notice of him on his death, 29 April, 

 1 81 5, by 'an old scholar, grateful for past 

 kindness.' Thomson must have had just 

 such another good creature in his eye when 

 he described 



A little man, close button'd to the chin, 

 Broadcloth without, an honest heart within. 



. . . ' Many gentlemen in the City of Lon- 

 don can bear testimony to the undeviating 

 and incessant care that was bestowed upon 

 their education, and will drop the tear of 

 affection and breathe the sigh of grateful re- 

 collection to his memory.' 1 A solicitor, 

 Samuel Isaac Lilley, who gave evidence before 

 Lord Brougham's commission in 1818,^ and 

 had begun a suit in Chancery against the 

 Governors, said he had been at the school from 

 1751 to 1759, when there were ' a great many 

 boarders ' and paying day-boys as well as the 

 twelve free scholars. The day-boys 'played 

 at one part of the premises and the boarders 

 at the other part.' The free boys were then 

 only taught English. The total number 

 must have been considerable, exceeding pro- 

 bably 150, as there were three ushers, and in 

 those days one master was considered well 

 able to cope with fifty boys. 



The whole population of Camberwell itself 

 was at this time not above 2,000. Half a 

 century later, at the date of Manning and 

 Bray's History of Surrey, in 1812, the parish 

 was still a rural parish, mainly consisting of 

 large villas with extensive parks or gardens 

 attached, and a population under 4,000 in 

 the whole of the ancient parish, which is now 

 cut up into thirty-two ecclesiastical parishes, 

 with a population exceeding 200,000. Thomas 

 Jephson must therefore have been a master 

 in considerable repute. 



On 23 December 1803, when Thomas 

 Jephson resigned, after his long rule of forty- 

 two years, and his son William was elected in 

 his place, only the vicar and churchwardens 

 of Camberwell were present. It seems to 

 have been assumed that he succeeded by 

 hereditary right as next of kin of the founder. 

 But from the ' Governors' Minutes,' already 

 quoted, it would seem that his hereditary 

 right, such as it was, was in virtue of his 

 being heir of his father and grandfather 

 only, not of the founder, and because of the 

 amount of money spent by the Jephsons on 

 the school buildings, which caused them to 

 be tacitly recognised as almost their private 

 property. 



The whole of the school property was let 

 to the new master at the enhanced rent of 

 £60, though it was recorded that in 1799- 

 1800 the father had expended £1,586 on 

 building a new dining room, parlour, kitchen, 

 outhouses and lodging rooms over. But as this 

 rent was the only fund out of which the 



1 Gentleman's Magazine, 1815, i. 475-6, from 

 Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist, 

 p. 633. R. F. Scott, Cambridge, 1903. 



2 Char. Com. Rep. 396. 



215 



