Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/394

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NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. OCT. 26, 1907.

improved grammars of the master, John Stanbridge, and of the usher, Robert Whit tington ; and it is to these men that we owe the beginnings of that reformed teaching o: grammar which Dean John Colet and William Lily, both of Magdalen, introduced into the more famous school of St. Paul's, London Shakespeare, as we know, had carefully studied his Lily's grammar, the ' Sententiae Pueriles,' and kindred school-books of the period. His Holofernes is steeped in such lore ; but his Pinch is a pedagogue of an inferior breed a quack conjuring doctor The Stratford School was probably helc during the poet's boyhood in the Gild Chapel now the School Chapel hard by Shake- speare's later home at New Place. The old schoolrooms were then out of repair , and Malvolio is likened to " a pedant thai keeps school i' the church." But the most charming encounter with a pedagogue in Shakespeare is the scene between " Sir " Hugh Evans and little William Page perhaps a reminiscence from the boyhood of a greater William when, he, too, was a

Whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.

The frequent applications of the birch in those heroic days must have accounted for a great deal of "whining," and have overclouded, it is to be feared, a number of " shining morning faces." I have always thought that little William Page in ' The Merry Wives ' behaved with great forbear- ance and politeness, as he was forced to exhibit specimens of his "good sprag memory " upon a holiday. Roche, appa- rently, continued to live at Stratford after he had ceased to be master of the school ; for in 1582 he moved into a house in Chapel Street, and replaced the tiles with old- fashioned thatch (Sidney Lee's ' Stratford- on-Avon,' 1904, p. 131). Simon Hunt, his tsuccessor, is probably the man who took his B.A. degree at Oxford on 5 April, 1568 ; and the next master, the Thomas Jenkins (Jenkeins or Jenkens), scholar of St. John's College, Oxon, who took his B.A. degree on 6 April, 1566 ; his M.A. on 8 April, 1570.

The master of 1583, Alexander Aspinall or Aspinwall, is probably identical with the Brasenose undergraduate from Lancashire who took his B.A. degree on 25 Feb., 1575 ; Ms M.A. on 12 June, 1578. Some have thought that the Rosalind beloved by Edmund Spenser was a lady of the Aspinall family. A later master, John Trapp, was a man of some importance in his day. In 1622, at the age of nineteen, he was made

usher of the Free School by the Stratford Corporation ; and succeeded to the master- ship on 2 April, 1624, taking his M.A. degree from Christ Church, Oxon, in the same year. In 1636 he was presented to the vicarage of Weston-on-Avon, two miles distant from his school. Upon the outbreak of the great Civil War, Trapp sided with Parliament, took the Covenant of 1643, and suffered much from the tender mercies of the King's soldiers at Weston. He acted as chaplain to the Puritans in the Stratford garrison for two years. In 1646 the Westminster Assembly of Divines gave him the rectory of Welford, which he retained until the Restoration, when he returned to Weston, and there died in 1669. During his residence at Welford (1646-60) he had appointed Ms son-in-law, Robert Dale, to be his deputy in the school at Stratford. Trapp was not only " one of the prime preachers of his time," but also an assiduous commentator on the Bible ; and Mr. J. Stanley Culver- well, the present Captain of the School, tells me that ' Trapp on the New Testament ' is one of the most interesting and valuable of the old volumes preserved in the School Library the fine old chamber formerly the Council Room. Trapp's son John was vicar of Stratford 1682-4 ; and a grandson, Joseph, was in 1708 the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford (see ' D.N.B.,' Ivii. 155). It was this Dr. Joseph Trapp who wrote the celebrated epigram :

The King, observing with judicious eyes

The wants of his two Universities,

To Oxford sent a troop of horse ; and why?

That learned body wanted loyalty.

To Cambridge books he sent, as well discerning

How much that loyal body wanted learning.

Josiah Simcox was master 1669-81. A native of West Bromwich, co. Stafford, he matriculated at New Inn Hall, Oxon, on 21 Feb., 1662, aged seventeen ; took his B.A. degree in 1665 ; was elected master on 12 Nov., 1669 ; appointed vicar of Strat- ford 25 Nov., 1681 ; and died 27 December of the same year. His successor as Master, John Johnson, was probably the son of Matthew of Weston, who matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxon, on 3 Nov., 1665, aged eighteen. He was succeeded (1688- 1722) by Thomas Willes, son, apparently, of Thomas of Kingston, Surrey, D.D., who matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxon, on 1 July, 1676, aged fourteen ; took his B.A. degree in 1680 ; his M.A. from Clare Hall (now College), Cambridge, in 1683 ; and was vicar of Weston-on-Avon in 1689. lis successor Gabriel Barrodale (1722-35)