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 who exempted the higher forms from flogging; he disliked flogging, and the system of monitorial caning seems to have grown up in his time. The ill-health of his wife and his own desire for rest and for country pursuits led him to resign the head-mastership in 1805; he retired to Dawlish, Devonshire, where he had already purchased an estate called Cockwood, and there occupied himself in farming his land, in the duties of a magistrate, and the pursuits of a country gentleman. He became acquainted with Edmund Kean the elder when acting at Exeter in 1810–11, went to see him act in different characters night after night, warmly admired his talents, and helped to establish him at Drury Lane Theatre. For some years he was vicar of Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire; he did not reside there, and held the living on condition of resigning it to a son of the patron, Lord Lilford; his only other church preferment was the prebend of Dultincote in Wells Cathedral, to which he was instituted in 1812. He died at Cockwood on 9 Jan. 1834, at the age of eighty-four, and was buried at St. Leonard's, Exeter. Drury left three sons, all in holy orders: Henry Joseph Thomas [q. v.], for forty-one years assistant-master of Harrow, the father of the Rev. Benjamin Heath Drury, late assistant-master of Harrow; Benjamin Heath, assistant-master of Eton; and Charles, rector of Pontesbury, Shropshire, and one daughter, Louisa Heath, the wife of John Herman Merivale, commissioner of bankruptcy. Mark Drury, the second master of Harrow, who was a candidate for the head-mastership in 1805 (, Life of Byron, p. 29), was Drury's younger brother.

[Annual Biography and Obituary, xix. 1–36, contains a memoir of Drury by his youngest son, Charles; Thornton's Harrow School, pp. 191–214; Welch's Alumni Westmonast. pp. 383, 388; Drake's Heathiana, p. 22; Le Neve's Fasti, i. 203; Byron's Childe Harold, iv. 75, and Hours of Idleness; Moore's Life of Byron, ed. 1847, pp. 19, 20, 29, 66, 89, 103, 117, 267; information kindly supplied by the Rev. Benjamin Heath Drury.]  DRURY, ROBERT (d. 1536), speaker of the House of Commons, eldest son of Roger Drury, lord of the manor of Hawsted, Suffolk, by Felicia, daughter and heir of William Denton of Besthorpe, Norfolk, was educated at the university of Cambridge, and probably at Gonville Hall. He figures with his father as commissioner of array for Suffolk in 1487 (Materials for the Reign of Henry VII, Rolls Ser., ii. 135). He was a barrister-at-law and a member of Lincoln's Inn, being mentioned in the list preserved by Dugdale among the ‘governors’ of that society in 1488–9, 1492–3, and 1497 (Orig. 258), but the date of his admission is uncertain. On 17 Oct. 1495 he was elected speaker of the House of Commons, being then knight of the shire for Suffolk (Rot. Parl. vi. 459). This parliament produced many private acts and one public statute of importance, whereby it was enacted that ‘no person going with the king to the wars shall be attaint of treason’ (11 Hen. VII, c. i.). Bacon characterises this measure as ‘rather just than legal and more magnanimous than provident,’ but praises it as ‘wonderful, pious, and noble’ ( Works, Literary and Professional, ed. Spedding, i. 159). In 1501 he obtained from Pope Alexander VI a license to have a chapel in his house, ‘the parish church being a mile distant and the road subject to inundations and other perils.’ On 29 Aug. 1509 he attested the document whereby Henry VIII renewed his father's treaty with Scotland, and he was also one of the commissioners appointed to receive the oath of the Scottish king and to treat for the redress of wrongs done on the border (, Fœdera, xiii. 262, 263, 264). On 12 March 1509–10 he obtained a license to impark two thousand acres of land, and to fortify his manors in Suffolk (Letters and Papers … Henry VIII, i. 143). Between June 1510 and February 1512–13 inclusive he was engaged with various colleagues in the attempt to pacify the Scottish border by peaceful methods, and to obtain redress for wrongs committed (, Fœdera, xiii. 276, 301, 346). He witnessed the marriage of the Princess Mary on 9 Oct. 1514 (Letters and Papers … Henry VIII, i. 898), was appointed knight for the body in 1516 (ib. vol. ii. pt. i. p. 872), was one of a commission appointed to examine suspects arrested in the district of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields in July 1519 (ib. vol. iii. pt. i. p. 129), was present on the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and on 10 July of the same year was in attendance on the king when he met the Emperor Charles at Gravesend (ib. 241, 243, 326). In 1521 he was a commissioner for perambulating and determining the metes and bounds of the town of Ipswich (ib. 469). In 1522 he was in attendance on the king at Canterbury (ib. 967). In 1523 and 1524 he was chief commissioner for the collection of the subsidy in Suffolk and town of Ipswich, and in 1524 he was a commissioner for the collection of the loan for the French war (ib. 1365, 1366, 1457, vol. iv. pt. i. pp. 82, 238). He is mentioned in 1526 as one of the legal or judicial committee of the privy council, ranking in point of precedence next after Sir Thomas More (ib. pt. iii. 3096). In 1530 he was one of the commissioners of gaol delivery for Ipswich