Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/30

 16 THE CECILS

expectation foretold his great future fortune." He was educated at the Grammar School at Grantham, and afterwards at Stamford, and in May, 1535, at the age of fourteen, he entered as a student at St. John's College, Cambridge.

Here he distinguished himself by his " diligence and towardness," hiring the bell-ringer to call him at four o'clock in the morning, and applying him- self so closely to his studies that he seriously injured his health (" which was thought one of the original causes of his gout "). The Master of the College, Dr. Medcalf, a man who, though no scholar himself, knew how to breed scholars and had made St. John's the most famous place of education in England, showed special favour to young Cecil, and " would often give him money to encourage him." And he proved so " toward, studious and rarely capable " that he read the sophistry lecture at the age of sixteen and after- wards read the Greek lecture, " as a gentleman for his exercise upon pleasure, without pension, before he was nineteen years old; which he per- formed so learnedly as was beyond expectation of a student of his time or one of his years or birth. For at that time it was a rare thing to have any perfection in the Greek tongue."

Among Cecil's acquaintances at Cambridge were Matthew Parker, afterwards Archbishop of Canter- bury, Nicholas Bacon, father of Francis and afterwards Lord Keeper, Roger Ascham and John Cheke, who subsequently became Regius Professor of Greek and tutor to Edward VI.