A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 



1824, in which John Brereton, LL.D., appears as archididascalus and Thomas Brereton, LL.B., as 

 pedagogus. There were sixty-one boys, of whom thirty-six were scholars on the foundation. 



A third Act of Parliament was obtained in 1820 which increased the allowances made to the 

 masters and provided for assistant masters, and authorized boarders. It established an English school 

 apart from the Grammar School. The effect was good. At the date of the next extant roll, 1836, 

 the Rev. H. C. Le Mesurier, M.A., was pedagogus or usher. He too was scholar of Winchester 

 (i 8 1 7) and fellow of New College. The other masters were the Rev. E. Swann, M.A. (Cambridge), 

 Preceptor Mathematicus, and E. Smith, B. A., sub-preceptor. There were 104 boys, of whom 

 34 were scholars on the foundation. In 1842 the Rev. C. Brereton, B.C. L., son of the head 

 master, and scholar of Winchester and fellow of New College, appears as sub-preceptor, and there 

 were ninety-six boys, of whom only nineteen were scholars on the foundation. In 1845 two sub- 

 preceptors appear and the number of boys had risen to 148, of whom fifteen were scholars, and in 

 1850 there were 181, of whom twenty-two were scholars. 



It looked as if the school would go up to numbers anticipatmg those of the present day. But 

 this was Dr. Brereton 's high-water mark. In 1851 an agitation began for a new Bill for amend- 

 ment of the Act of 1793. Its effect on the school, from the uncertainty it created as to the 

 outcome of it, was instantaneous. In 1852 the number had fallen to 158 boys, in 1854 to 129, 

 of whom only nine were scholars, and in that year a new scheme was made by the Court of Chancery. 

 In 1855 Dr. Brereton died. 



The new master was Frederick Fanshawe, the first, with the exception of Aspinall, for 1 50 

 years who had not been a fellow of New College. He was, however, a Wykehamist, commoner at 

 Winchester in 1835, scholar and fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, where he won the chancellor's 

 prize for Latin verse in 1 841, and took a First Class in Classics in 1842. He had a very stormy 

 time at first. The scheme of 1853 having separated the English Schools from the Grammar 

 School, the trustees at once determined to run the Commercial School, as they now called it, against 

 the Grammar School, which was under the control of New College, and to thwart the develop- 

 ment of the latter. It was only under threat of resignation that Fanshawe obtained leave to take 

 thirty boarders himself, though as we have seen boarders had been taken in the school for at least 1 50 

 years. It cost several years' struggle before the second master was allowed also to take boarders to the 

 number of twenty. The trustees made the German and French and drawing masters common to 

 the Grammar and Commercial School. They paid the head master of the Commercial School the 

 same salary as the head master of the Grammar School. When this school was examined the whole 

 school was not presented, '° but only selected boys in each class, with the deliberate object of 

 obtaining and circulating unduly favourable reports. It was only by constant pressure from New 

 College and after prolonged struggles, that new buildings, a pension to retain the mathematical 

 master, or any other improvement at the Grammar School could be obtained. The staff was so 

 limited in number that the boys averaged forty-eight for each master. The assistant masters 

 were underpaid; though ^^3,000 a year altogether was spent on the schools. At last in i86i 

 new buildings were added and opened with much civic ceremony. 



It is surprising that in these adverse circumstances Mr. Fanshawe had so many as 194 boys ■ 

 at the time of the visit of Mr. R. S. (afterwards Lord Justice) Wright in 1866, as Assistant 

 Commissioner under the Schcols Inquiry Commission. At the same time the Commercial School 

 numbered 320 boys, and the Commercial Preparatory School 237. The National School contained 

 370 boys. The Girls' School, an elementary school for poor children only, contained 490 children ; 

 an Infants' School, 250 children. Altogether 1,861 children were being educated on the Harper 

 foundation, then producing over ;^i 3,000 a year. But the bulk of them were receiving only elemen- 

 tary education, in no way superior to what they would have received without the endowment. The 

 greater part of the income was spent on charities, of which Mr. Wright remarked : 



It is generally admitted in the town that the apprentice fees (£680 a year) are useless, apprenticeship 

 IS dying out . . . and artificially kept up by these fees. The almshouses ... are jobbed for political 

 purposes. That the doles are positively injurious few deny. These funds are so far not only wasted 

 : but injuriously applied. The charity colours and determines the whole life of many in Bedford. It 



bribes the father to marry for the sake of his wife's small marriage portion ; it takes the child from 

 infancy and educates him in a set form, settles the course of his life by an apprentice fee, pauperises 

 him by doles, and takes away a chief object of industry by the prospect of an almshouse. 



He pointed out that tuition fees must be imposed. 



There is vehement objection to fees . . . founded not on reason or on any consideration of 

 comparative advantages, but on an absolute unreasoning claim to a supposed birthright to educational 

 alms . . . Free education has already overstrained the existing resources, and will soon break them. 



" Sci. Inq. Rep. viii, 693. 



