Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/328

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s.i. APRIL 22, me.

was probably the Devon Probationary Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxon, of 1558, who became B.A. in the following year, when he is entered as from Lancaster. As he appears to be identical with one of the two C.C.C. Choristers of 1552, he would probably have attended Magdalen College School in the early part of his career, in accordance with the provisions of his founder, Bishop Foxe, as expressed in the Corpus Statutes. (See Boase's ' Register of University of Oxford,' i. pp. xxii, 240 ; and President Fowler's ' History of C.C.C.,' pp. 387, 429.) Roche was appointed by the queen to the rectory of Clifford Chambers on Nov. 4, 1574, which he resigned on Jan. 20, 1577/8. But he continued to live in Stratford, where " Mary daughter to Mr. Walter Roche, minister, was baptized llth of Sept., 1575." In 1582 the chamberlains refer to " a tenement in the tenure" of Mr. W. R. (v. Mrs. C. C. Stopes' s ' Shakespeare's Warwickshire Con- temporaries,' 1907, p. 244). And with reference to this Sir Sidney Lee, in his book ' Stratford-on-Avon,' 1904, p. 131, writes: " Tiled roofs were characteristic of such [viz. stone] buildings, but at times an owner of con- servative tendencies would insist on the superiority of thatch, like Walter Roche, who moved into a house in Chapel Street in 1582, and replaced the tiles with thatch."

Mr. Leach says (in ' V. C. H. Warwick ' and Journal of Education, March, 1908) that in 1573 another master had come, a Mr. Hunt. He writes :

" Though the chamberlains were bound to do the repairs for the school, they made him pay 6s. lid. ' towardes the repayringe of the schole windowes.' Window-repairing on an extensive scale is one of frequent occurrence hi school accounts and of frequent dispute between school- masters and governing bodies. The turbulent youth of the day seem to have broken the windows systematically at ' barring-out ' of the master on going home for the holidays a sort of saturna- lia often fulminated against, but never put down till our milder age."

To Mr. Leach the master in question was probably George Hunt, a Merchant Taylors' schoolboy, who took his B.A. degree from Magdalen College, Oxon, on April 27, 1573, aged 20, and became a Fellow in 1575. He conjectures that he spent the two years from Michaelmas, 1573, between taking his B.A. degree and becoming a M.A. anc Fellow, as master at Stratford. And he goes so far as to say :

" It is hard not to believe that poor Mr. Hun was the original of Hoi of ernes. Is not his very name suggested, when Holofernes enters^ talking of a hunt, ' very reverend sport, truly ' ? " The conjecture, however, is perhaps not s( wild as that which sees in the pedant o

Love's Labour's Lost ' a caricature of the ccomplished Italian scholar John Florio. 3ut the Stratford master was not this George Hunt, who was the son of John Hunt, eoman, an early Reformer and a confessor .nder Queen Mary (v. Foxe's ' Acts and VEon.' under year 1588, and Dr. Macray's Register of Magdalen Coll., Oxon,' new eries, ii. p. 194). The Stratford master used o be called by writers on Shakespeare's education " Thomas Hunt " ; and Halliwell- i'hillipps identifies him with the curate of ^uddington of 1584, in which year he was uspended for open contumacy (v. * Out- ines,' ii. 364, note 299). This is repeated by Sir S. Lee in ' A Life of Shakespeare,' second edition, 1898, p. 13, and in his ' Stratford/ &c., 1904, p. 175 ; but the name and dates have been corrected in the 1915 edition of the buthor's ' Life of William Shakespeare,' which brms so worthy a memorial of English scholar- ship and of the tercentenary of the poet's death.For the actual Stratford master was, un- doubtedly, not George or Thomas, but Simon Hunt, who may have been the Oxford B.A, of April 5, 1569 (v. Boase, ibid., 269). Mr. J. W. Gray (* Shakespeare's Marriage,' 1905,
 * >. 108 ; and v. Mrs. Stopes, ibid., 244) prints

the appointment in October, 1571, of Simon Hunt, B.A., from the Bishop of Worcester's register licences to teach in the parishes of bis diocese being at that time issued by the Bishop. Hunt appears to have left in 1575,. for, according to Mr. Leach ('V. C. H Warwick,' 335), " the accounts rendered 14 March, 1575/6, show ' paid to the ser- jeantes for a schole master that came from Warwick 3s.,' and are probably expenses connected with his coming to be inter- viewed." Mr. Hunt's successor must remain unidentified, for, unfortunately, we do not know who was the master at Warwick at this time.

The next master at Stratford mentioned by name is Mr. Jenkins, who, to judge from the accounts, probably came at Lady Day,. 1578. Mrs. Stopes (ibid., 245), under 1578,, gives an entry by the chamberlains : " Paid to Sir Higges, Schoolmaster, 101. : item, to Mr. Jenkins, Schoolmaster, his half year's wages, 10Z." This Thomas Jenkins may have been the Thomas Jenkyn, or Jenkyns, who took his B.A. degree from Hart Hall, Oxon, on March 3, 1575/6 ; or, more pro- bably, because he is styled Mr. rather than Sir, the Thomas Jenkens, or Jenkins, B.A. April 6, 1567, Fellow of St. John's College, Oxon, who took his M.A. degree on April 8, 1570. This man, apparently, had on June 4, 1572, been granted a lease of " Chawser's