Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/327

 12 S. I. APRIL 22, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

321

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL 33, 1916.

OONTENTS.-No. 17.

Holof ernes? 323 -Philip James Bailey, 324 A Cipher of Names Sussex Windmills" Taper," 326.
 * NOTES : Shakespeare's Schoolmasters, 321 Who was

'QUERIES: A Shakespeare Portrait Satyrs' Dance- Sophie Dorothea of Hanover, 326 Julian Hibbert, Printer A Mensal Chapelry st. George Mumming Play Jacob Edward Tavarf-z ' David Copperfleld 'Author Wanted Wright Family Arms Picture Wanted : Trial of the Tichborne Claimant, 327 Bowing in the House of Commons 'The Ghent Paternoster 'The Dragon-Fly Venetian Coin Inscriptions Drawing of Fort Jerome and H.M.S. Argo and Sparrow Coverlo St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street Colour-Printing Mid-Nineteenth Century, 328 Adelaide Neilson Richard Carruthers, Artist 'History of Masonry' Folk-Lore : Chime-Hours The " Jennings Property " Brianus de Rede, 329.

REPLIES : The History of an "Inedite" English Letter of Voltaire, 329 "Coffer" as an Architectural Term " Swaddy " Song Wanted, 333 Johnstone of Lockerbie Thomas Miners Heraldry Authors Wanted Mrs. Quon or Quane : Major Roach, 334 Powdered Glass 'Fourteenth-Century Stained Glass : Episcopal Ring Eear-Admiral Donald Campbell, 335 The Second Wife of John Moyle of Eastwell Cotterill : Connexion with the Continent Leitner Disraeli and Mozart Rev. Row- land Hill, 336 George Knight. Artist Gunfire and Rain Sarum Missal: Hymn, 337 Cuckoo in Folk-Lore Quotations on Death ' Anecdotes of Monkeys,' 338 Contributions to the History of European Travel Collins : Asylum at Islington Montagu and Manchester, 339.

JTOTES ON BOOKS :-' Shakespeare's Industry '' Sur- names of the United Kingdom.'

Shakespeariana with a Few Elizabethan Books.

Notices to Correspondents.

SHAKESPEARE'S SCHOOLMASTERS.

late Arthur F. Leach, to whom English- men owe so great a debt of gratitude for the unravelling and in many cases the re- schools, has made two interesting identi- fications in his article on * Shakespeare's School ' in The Journal of Education for January, 1908. These he repeats in the .pp. 331-2, as follows, where, speaking of Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar School, he says :
 * discovery of the origins of their ancient
 * Victoria County History of Warwick,' ii.

'* The next entry of a Master was in 1477-8, .and is of great interest. ' Richard Fox, master of grammar, and also bachelor, at this time of Stratford, was received into the brotherhood of the gild, and made a fine for 6s. 8d. ' (Holy Cross Gild Beg. fol. 107). There can hardly be a doubt that this was the man who became Prime Minister (viz. Lord Privy Seal) of Henry VII., bishop of divers sees, eventually of Winchester, and founder of Corpus Christi College (Oxon). The entry also fills a gap in the life of Fox."

Apparently Foxe would have been about 30 years of age at this date ; and the

hypothesis seems a reasonable one. But the second identification is much more questionable. To quote Mr. Leach again : " The first appointment of a schoolmaster on the new terms [viz. on the reception of the Jolyffe endowment] was made on Monday after June 24, 1482 (' Stratford Mun.,' iii. 420), when the gild granted to sir William Smyth, clerk, ' a priestly service ' on the condition that he would conduct

a free grammar school The gild accounts for

1483-4 show 6s. 8d. ' received from sir William Smyth, clerk and grammar scholar,' while the register records his reception as ' sir William Smyth, bachelor in arts, master of grammar.' This William Smyth, there can be little doubt, was the distinguished civil servant and statesman of that name who .... when Bishop of Lincoln, founded Brasenose College, Oxford."

But according to the Rev. J. Harvey Bloom's little pamphlet, entitled ' The An- cient Free School of the Gild of the Holy Cross, Stratford - upon - Avon, commonly called King Edward VI.'s School,' p. 8, in the year 1483-4 the soul of Master William Smith, " Clerico et Scolaris Gramatico," was prayed for (P.A. 96) ; while William Smith or Smyth, the pious founder, was not made a bishop until 1493, and did not die before 1514. The schoolmaster may possibly have been akin to the bishop ; for Churton, the latter' s biographer, complains that during Smyth's episcopate the cathedral of Lincoln was " peopled with persons of the name of William Smyth." But the name is and was a common one ; and it is noticeable that in Mr. Leach's last book, ' The Schools of Medieval England ' (1915),p. 243, although he mentions the Stratford schoolmaster by name, he does not proceed to identify him with the bishop.

It is practically agreed upon all hands including Sir Sidney Lee, sanest of bio- graphers that, in accordance with the time-honoured tradition, William Shake- speare attended the Grammar School of his native town. There probably the poet learned his " little Latin and less Greek " (although many of us to-day would be glad to be so well equipped in any branch of learning as he evidently was in the classics), and suffered the bitter discipline of the ferule, fte probably entered the school in 1571 and left it in 1577, or in 1578, when he had arrived at 14 the legal age for apprenticing. At any rate, the end of 1582 saw him a married man.

Shakespeare's first schoolmaster would appear to have been one Walter Roche, but, as Mr. Leach says ('V. C. H. Warwick,' ii. 335), " only while he was being initiated into the first elements among the ' petties.' " This Walter Roche