Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/148

 142

NOTES AND QUERIES.

[ise. v. ju.

Et Qtiinquaginta"*quinque Annos amplius Primum Kuccinice* in agro Herbfordiensi Oppido _ De inde in hac Parcecia

Postremum scholae Paulinas Praeceptor

Per duodecim annos primarius >i*w4rio reipublicae commodo nee fama sua minori

Accurate diligenter et Studiose Literis ac Moribus ingenuis pueros instituebat Quorum animos caritate ita sibi conciliavit

[ ,Ut ... actoritatem facilitas non diminuerit

Pietate morum integritate Et propensa animi benignitate

Notis omnibus carus vixit

Magnum q: sui desiderium reliquit

Obiit in aedibus Paulinis VII. Id. Oct*

A.D. Moccxxxni.

JEtatis suae LXXVI.

In the Hackney Free Library is the Tyssen Collection, which was formed for the purpose of accumulating material for the history of Hackney written by William Robinson (who was himself educated at St. Paul's), and published in 1842. In this collection is a book of newspaper extracts, amongst which is the following, dated February, 1730:

" The gentlemen educated by Mr. Benjamin Morland, late of Hackney (now High Master of St. Paul's School), are desired to dine with him on Wednesday, the 24th instant, at Pontack's in Abchurch Lane, where tickets are ready to be delivered at half a guinea each."

Similar notices appear under the dates Feb. 19, 1731, Feb. 17, 1732, and Feb. 27, 1733, less than nine months before the schoolmaster's death.

There is also in the collection a press cutting dated March 24, 1770, relating to a dinner at the " Thatched House, St. James's, to the gentlemen educated at Dr. New- come's in Hackney." Dr. Newcome, as we shall see, was Mr. Morland' s immediate successor in the Head Mastership, and was in his turn followed in succession by two of his sons and one of his grandsons.

Comparatively little is known of Benja- min Morland' s tenure of the High Mastership of St. Paul's. The Surmaster of the school during the whole time was James Green- wood, the author of an English Grammar which went through many editions.

Samuel Knight in the ' Life of Colet ' states that under Morland the school was " in a very nourishing state" ; but as no school exhibitions were awarded from St. Paul's to the Universities for some years after 1720, the chief source of information as to its pupils for the period earlier than 1748 that of its earliest extant registers is missing for the whole term of Morland' s High Mastership. The names, in fact, of


 * Hitchin?

only forty of his pupils have been preserved. They include Thomas Salmon, Bishop of Ferns ; Charles Pinfold, a Governor of Barbados ; George North, the well-known antiquary and numismatist ; Thomas Broughton, one of the compilers of the ' Biographia Britannica ' ; and William Boyce, " the Arne of English church music."

A portrait in oils in St. Paul's School (reproduced in my * History of St. Paul's School ') is traditionally supposed to repre- sent Benjamin Morland. I have recently found in Allen's ' London,' 1828, vol. iii. p. 397, a statement that on each side of a portrait of one Edward Forster in Mercers' Hall are those of Morland and Richard Roberts (a later High Master of St. Paul's) as well as one of Colet on panel. Owing to the dismantling of Mercers' Hall as a result of the War, I have been unable to examine the portraits which are now preserved in it.

The will and codicil of Benjamin Morland, which I have seen at Somerset House, refer to four daughters and three grandchildren.

I have drawn up genealogical tables showing the various members of the Mor- land and the Newcome families as far as I have been able to identify them.

Robinson in his ' History of Hackney,' 1842, vol. ii. p. 140, states that Newcome's School was on the site of the London Orphan Asylum at Clapton, and that "Henry Newcome, the father" (this should read "the son") of the Rev. Peter Newcome, who was Vicar of Hackney in 1703, having married the daughter of Mr. Benjamin. Morland in 1714, succeeded his father-in-law in the care of this school, which till the year 1803 was superintended by his grand- son Mr. Richard Newcome. The Rev. J. C. Heathcote kept the school after 1803 until its end, I believe, in 1819 (12 S. i. 313).

Robinson states that Dr. Benjamin Hoadly and his brother Dr. John Hoadly (who became Archbishop of Armagh) were edu- cated at this school, and further states that in 1751 the Earl of Euston acted in a play of Terence, and that in 1764 Lord Harring- ton and Lord Richard Cavendish performed in plays at the school. The Earl of Euston was the grandson of the Duke of Grafton.

The advertisement of the sale of school furniture at Clapton, near Hackney, 1819 (12 S. i. 313), speaks of the former pupils of the school including " the Dukes of Devon- shire and Grafton, Lords Robert Cavendish, George Cavendish, Southampton, Stamford, Dover, and Hardwicke, Sir Gilbert Heath- cote, Mr. Pelham, &c." The Duke of Grafton