Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/225

 iv. SEW. 2,1906.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 183 factors of a sound education. Fuller's anecdote of the Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII., relates to some twelve years earlier than the date of Foxe's visitation. Once, he tells us, the pious foundress came to Christ's College at Cambridge to behold it when partly built, and, looking out of a window, saw the Dean call a faulty scholar to correction ; to whom she said " Lente, lente" ("Gently, gently"), as accounting it better to mitigate his punishment than pro- cure his pardon. And at the same College, more than a century later, the immortal John Milton received,according to his brother Christopher, from his first tutor William Chappell, ''some unkindnesse," whereto in his margin John Aubrey pithily appends the gloss "whip't him" ('Brief Lives,' ed. A. Clark, ii. C3). It is to be hoped that the youthful Demies, having endured the chas- tisement of the President, did not also experience the tender mercies of the school- master's ferrule ; for those were days When, Lilly's Rules being pare'd or conster'd ill, The weeping Ladda mount wooden Pegasus. His more advanced age and a less Spartan discipline have preserved the modern under- graduate from such personal indignities. In 1525 John Pereson, chorister in 1501, and Demy with Cannar mentioned above, became ninth Canon of Cardinal College. About this date Thomas Hedges, formerly both chorister and Demy, bequeaths to the College a small annual exhibition which still continues (Bloxam, iv. 46). On 12 September, 1535, the king's commissioners report thatat Magdalen they had found the lectures in theology, moral and natural philosophy, and " the Latin tongue" well kept. The Latin lecture was no doubt that of the grammar master, Richard Sherrey. To these they had added a lecture in Greek (Wilson, p. 77). A College lecturer of this period and former Demy. John Hoker, has left a curious letter, printed by Bloxatn (iv. 53), concerning the destruction in 1538 of the famous Rood of Boxley. The accounts for 1536 mention payments for additional buildings in the School. In 1547 the new Chantries Act of Edward VI. espe- cially exempts from destruction Winchester and Eton. They were indeed inseparably connected with 'the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Magdalen College School and Waiufleet School were saved for the same reason, though without express men- tion, as they actually received their endow- ment from the College (Leach's 'Winchester,' 261). Looking back for a moment to the earlier days of the College, we find in 1486 one William Wotton, "orkyn maker," furnishing the chapel with a pair of organs at a cost of twenty-eight pounds. The next year he enters into an agreement with the Warden of Merton to make for that college a similar pair of organs for the same price. He is supposed to have been the earliest organ- builder in this country, and Dr. Bloxam suspects him to have been a brother of Richard (Demy 1482), and uncle of Ed- ward Wotton (chorister 1502) noticed below. Anthony Wood, in his 'Annals,' under date 1486, tells a strange story concerning him. A certain poor priest of Oxford, he says in effect, named William Symonds, of the age of twenty - eight years, having a youth of a crafty wit and comely presence to his pupil, contrived that the said youth should be vulgarly reported by certain noble persons to be Edward, Earl of Warwick,, son of the Duke of Clarence. Some report that the said youth was named Lambert Symnell, and that he was a baker's son in Oxford; but the subtle priest's confession was the truest, that lie had by flattery seduced the son of a certain organ-maker of the University, and had caused him to be sent into Ireland, where he posed as a pretender to the Crown. And, he adds, " who that should be but one Edward [sic: William] Wotton I cannot tell, knowing very well from various obscure writs that such an one, and nobody else, professed that art at that time in Oxford." The priest, who, upon the failure of the rebel- lion, was imprisoned for life, is more generally known as Richard Simon ; and the official account of his pupil describes the latter in 1487 as "cone Lambert Symnell, a child of ten yere of age, sonne to Thomas Symnell, late of Oxforde, joynour." Henry VII. him- self, in his letter to the Pope, merely calls him " quemdam puerum de illegitirno thoro naturn." Other authorities besides Wood represent the father as an organ-builder; but it has been suggested that Simnel was a nickname given Lambert from the trade of his father, a baker—" simenel" or "simnel" being a small cake made of fine flour. Similar nicknames, such as Barlibred, Blanc- pain, and Havercake, were not uncommon. Where so much is conjecture is it rash to suggest that the pretender's second name embalms a reference to his close connexion with his tutor in deceit—the priest Simon 1 Even his age at the time of the rebellion is doubtful : Bacon makes him fifteen. War- wick at the same time would be about twelve. The king, when he had captured the " feigned boy," as he called him, "taking him," in Bacon's words, " but as an image of wax,"