Page:Survey of London by John Stow.djvu/96

68 of religious houses, whereof they were members, in the reign of Henry VIII., have been decayed, so again have some others been newly erected, and founded for them; as namely Paul's school, in place of an old ruined house, was built in most ample manner, and largely endowed, in the year 1512, by John Collet, Doctor of Divinity, Dean of Paul's, for one hundred and fifty-three poor men's children, for which there was ordained a master, surmaster, or usher, and a chaplain. Again, in the year 1553, after the erection of Christ's hospital, in the late dissolved house of the Gray Friars, a great number of poor children being taken in, a school was also ordained there at the citizen's charges. Also, in the year 1561, the Merchant Taylors of London founded one notable free grammar school, in the parish of St. Laurence Poultney by Candleweeke street, Richard Hils, late master of that company, having given five hundred pounds towards the purchase of a house, called the Mannor of the Rose, sometime the Duke of Buckingham's, wherein the school is kept. As for the meeting of the schoolmasters on festival days, at festival churches, and the disputing of their scholars logically, etc., whereof I have before spoken, the same was long since discontinued; but the arguing of the schoolboys about the principles of grammar hath been continued even till our time; for I myself, in my youth, have yearly seen, on the eve of St. Bartholomew the Apostle, the scholars of divers grammar schools repair unto the churchyard of St. Bartholomew, the priory in Smithfield, where upon a bank boarded about under a tree, some one scholar hath stepped up, and there hath opposed and answered, till he were by some better scholar overcome and put down; and then the overcomer taking the place, did like as the first; and in the end the best opposers and answerers had rewards, which I observed not but it made both good schoolmasters, and also good scholars, diligently against such times to prepare themselves for the obtaining of this garland. I remember there repaired to these exercises, amongst others, the masters and scholars of the free schools of St. Paul's in London, of St. Peter's at Westminster, of St. Thomas Acon's hospital, and of St. Anthonie's hospital; whereof the last-named commonly presented the best scholars, and had the prize in those days. This priory of St. Bartholomew being surrendered to Henry VIII., those disputations of scholars in that place surceased; and was again, only for a year or twain, in the reign of Edward VI., revived in the cloister of Christ's hospital, where the best