Page:Eight Friends of the Great - WP Courtney.djvu/123

SCROPE BERDMORE DAVIES 103 vicarage of Horsley in Gloucestershire, situate about four miles from the town of Tetbury, and in the register of the parish "Christianisings," to use his own word, are the entries of seven of his children "by Margaretta his wife." The names and dates are (1) 9 May 1779, John—the vicar must have married while yet an undergraduate, (2) 10 Jan 1781, Isabella, (3) 1 Jany 1783 Scrope Berdmore, (4) 7 April 1785, Thomas, (5) 24 May 1787 Maria, (6) 9 July 1789 Genevova, born 30 March last, (7) David de l'Engle. For some years to 1792 the father held the lectureship in the parish church of Tetbury and he retained, with the living of Horsley, the vicarage of Tetbury from 1792 until 1825. Scrope Berdmore Davies was born towards the end of the year 1782 and probably acquired the rudiments of his classical knowledge in the grammar school of Tetbury. It was founded in 1610 under the will of sir William Romney, alderman of the city of London, who had been born in and was a great benefactor to the town, and at it were educated Oldham, the poetical satirist, and Trapp, the unpoetical professor of poetry at Oxford. The worthy cit had risen by commerce and to stimulate others in the art of commercial calculation ordered in his will, that "the schoolmaster shall be very skilful in arithmetick, which art teacheth much wit unto all sorts of men and traders but is too little known in our land, especially in our country towns and cities." Alas for poor Davies, the art of adding and multiplying his resources never became his! Nor does the ordinance of the school that the Master "shall not read unto the schollars any of ye obscene odes, satyres, or epigrams of Juvenal Martial or Horace" appear if we may judge by his after life to have contributed to his moral edification. Scrope Davies went to Eton and became one of its King's Scholars. We find him in the upper school fifth form