Schoolmasters in any schoole
Writing with pen and ink.
CHILDE MAURICE.
“MANNERS makyth man”—‘manners’ in the old and wide sense of the word, the equivalent of the Latin ‘mores,’ or of the word ‘conversation’ in St. Paul’s epistles, i.e. moral worth and character as contrasted with wealth, or the symbols of rank and power. This is the motto inseparably connected with Wykeham’s foundations at Winchester and Oxford alike, and who shall say how potent this motto has been in inspiring and moulding the character of English manhood and English public schools during the five centuries and more since their great founder was laid to rest?
Winchester College is no common place. If Winchester Cathedral, which enshrines the bones of Egbert, should be the Mecca of all pious lovers of the Empire, Winchester College should be the Mecca for all English public school men. Not that Wykeham was the first to found an English public school, whatever exactly the term ‘public school’ may mean. Schools had existed in the land for six or seven hundred years before Wykeham’s day. There were schools in Winchester itself, as, for instance, the ancient Winchester Grammar School, seven of the poor scholars of which received a meal daily in the Hundred Mennes Hall at St. Cross. Wykeham did not invent schools as public schools, but what he did was to give to public schools the special impetus and character which they have borne ever since, and in this sense he is rightly named and revered as the ‘Father of English public schools.’
Earlier schools had almost invariably been linked to collegiate churches—the communities of secular canons—and had occupied always a subordinate position. Wykeham gave an independent position to his school, strengthening it indeed by making it part of a collegiate body, and linking it with the University, through the sister foundation of New College—St. Marie College of Wynchester in Oxford, to give it its full name—which Wykeham had completed in 1386.
Before the college could be commenced many preliminaries were necessary,—bulls from the Pope, and other official sanctions, lawsuits and agreements with all kinds of bodies which had an interest in the site; but Wykeham began to organise his school before the permanent buildings were ready, and for some years his scholars were lodged in temporary quarters somewhere by St. Giles’s Hill. The site chosen for the buildings was just outside the city walls to the south, and when at last all was ready, on March 20, 1394, the opening ceremony was solemnized. The aged bishop received the Warden and seventy scholars in the presence chamber of his Episcopal palace of Wolvesey, and the whole body left Wolvesey in solemn procession, and entered and took possession of their new abode.
Wykeham’s immediate purpose in founding a school appears to have been to help to provide a body of educated clergy. Successive visitations of the ‘Black Death’ had depleted the land of clergy, just as it had of labourers, and there was pressing need for a supply of educated men to recruit their ranks. It was to be part of the object of the college to provide such recruits.
The scheme of the college and the statutes of the founders were carefully thought out and elaborated. The college was part of a wide educational scheme: a school and something more—a society, with roots in Oxford as well as in Winchester. The society was to comprise a school, a chantry, and a body of Fellows. The school was to consist of seventy scholars, a number chosen very possibly in symbolical allusion to the seventy ordained to teach and preach throughout the land of Galilee, just as Dean Colet afterwards chose ‘a hundred and fifty and three’ as the number of his scholars in the school he founded—St. Paul’s School, London. Over these were a master or Magister informator, and an usher or hostiarius: the chantry was equipped with three chaplains, three chapel clerks, and sixteen choristers: the number of Fellows or Socii was ten. The supreme head over this varied community was the Warden.
TOWER OF AMBULATORY, HOSPITAL OF ST. CROSS, WINCHESTER
A picturesque red-brick corner of the domestic buildings of St. Cross Hospital, close to the magnificent grey-stone tower and archway known as Beaufort’s Tower.
This society, complete in itself and so far independent, was linked with another—the sister foundation of New College, Oxford—in such a way as to gain stability and dignity without subordination. Winchester was to be independent of New, but the influence of New was to be a potent factor in determining the policy of Winchester. The Warden of Winchester was to be appointed by New College, and New College was also to have extensive powers of visitation.
In Wykeham’s day any separation of the religious element from other aspects of education would have been deemed impossible, and everything was cast in a religious and even semi-monastic mould. Nevertheless the organisations for the school and chantry were kept quite distinct, and while divine service was celebrated practically continuously by the chantry staff, the scholars were required to attend chapel services only on Sundays, saints’ days, or other festivals. The Warden and Fellows alike were to be in priests’ orders. The Fellows had duties to perform connected with the chantry, but none connected with the school, except that the Warden and Fellows were to elect the headmaster. The headmaster was not necessarily to be in holy orders; he was to teach the scholars, and to maintain discipline, and was to be assisted by the usher or hostiarius. The ‘seventy’ were to be pauperes et indigentes, i.e. poor and in need of assistance, apt to study, and well versed in the rudiments of Latin grammar, reading, and plain-song. They were to be elected by a body of six, known afterwards as ‘the Chamber,’ from the room overlooking Middle or Chamber Court, ‘Election Chamber,’ where elections took place. The ‘Chamber’ was to consist of the Warden and two Fellows from New (known as the senior and junior ‘posers’ respectively), with the Warden, Subwarden, and Headmaster of Winchester. In election preference was to be given to founder’s kin, and then to others in due degrees of priority of claim. They were to remain until the age of eighteen years, unless on the roll for New College; but founder’s kin could remain till the age of twenty-five years.
The scholars were to be lodged, boarded, clothed, and taught entirely free of expense: they were not to keep dogs, ferrets, or hawks: to carry arms or frequent taverns: to empty water, etc., on the heads of their companions from windows in the court—regulations which throw a curious light on the manners of the time. The scholars were to be lodged and fed under the charge of the hostiarius or usher—an arrangement which obtains even now, as the ‘seventy’ still reside in chambers in college, under the charge of the second master.
We must not suppose that Wykeham’s scholars were to be boys either destitute or in actual want. The term pauperes et indigentes was probably a formal expression, designed to exclude the actually wealthy rather than anything else, like the term in need of financial assistance inserted in modern scholarship regulations.
In addition to the above, the statutes contemplated the admission of a limited number of outsiders, known as commensales or commoners, and later on town boys or oppidani were admitted as day boys. The conditions under which the commoners resided varied greatly from time to time. In 1727 Dr. Burton, then headmaster, made extensive additions to the College buildings, practically converting his own house into a boarding-house for them, and this building became known as ‘Old Commoners.’ In 1838 Commoners was rebuilt, under the name of New Commoners, but the result was not very satisfactory, and in 1860 the present plan of boarding in tutors’ houses was commenced, when the Rev. H. J. Wickham opened the first ‘House.’ In 1869, during Dr. Moberly’s tenure as headmaster, the system was extended. ‘Commoners’ was done away with, the commoners themselves lodged in tutors’ houses, and the building in part transformed into ‘Moberly Library’—so termed in memory of Dr. Moberly.
The College buildings and grounds are a charm and a delight. From the outer front in College Street, little indeed can be seen. The headmaster’s house, built on the site of the old Sustern Spital, is a flat-fronted modern building faced with squared flints, and the old Brewery presents little but a blank wall of ancient masonry. The one external feature of interest is the delightful ‘Old Gateway’ surmounted by a statue of the Virgin.
Passing under Old Gateway with College Brew House on the right, and then under Middle Gate into Chamber Court, one is transported back immediately into mediaevalism. There over Middle Gate is the figure of ‘Sainte Marie,’ and scholars, juniors, at least, if not always seniors, as they cross the quad, doff their hats still in reverence to the Virgin as they have done from the beginning. Immediately opposite you are Chapel and Hall. Chapel, with Fromond’s chantry used by Lower-school ‘Men,’—for Winchester is remarkable among schools as having two chapels—and the beautiful cloisters behind it, those cloisters which the Founder himself seems almost to pervade and to spiritualize with his presence, is a place to wander in and dream dreams of the past. Hall, approached, as befits its dignity, up a grand old stairway, is splendidly impressive, with its magnificent open timber roof and carved wainscot, and the Founder’s portrait—a picture of real grace and beauty—dominating the high table or dais at the other end. In the lobby adjoining the kitchen they will show you the ‘Trusty Servant,’ the quaint old painting emblematic of loyal and devoted service. The riddle is explained in a copy of verses attached, and the absence of any reference to expectation of reward on behalf of the ‘Trusty Sweater’ is at least as suggestive as his loyalty and humble demeanour.
Most appealing, perhaps, after Hall, possibly more even than Cloisters, is ‘Seventh Chamber,’ Wykeham’s original schoolroom, or part of it at least, now used as a common study for senior College men, and a veritable museum of interesting reminders of old Wykehamical life mingled confusedly with aggressively incongruous and more modern ‘intrusive deposits,’—here perhaps a framed ‘Vanity Fair’ cartoon of the headmaster; there possibly a couple of Teddy Bears serving as mascots—for in college life the points of contrast between ancient and modern are curious and startling, while not the least alluring of its characteristic features is the rich flavour and vigour of college nomenclature. ‘Moab,’ the boys’ washing-place in earlier and less luxurious days—“Moab is my wash-pot”—is a delicious example of this. College phraseology is a subject almost worthy of separate treatment by itself.
‘Seventh Chamber Passage,’ itself originally part of Seventh Chamber, leads you to ‘School,’ the seventeenth-century schoolroom built by Warden Nicholas. Here you may see the ‘thrones’ or official seats in earlier days of headmaster and usher, and the world-famous Winchester emblem on the walls—
Aut disce
Aut discede
Manet tertia sors—caedi.
which may be freely rendered—
Learn, or depart, or stay and be beaten;
though it is more than doubtful whether, in the experience of earlier Wykehamists at least, the first and the last-mentioned fates were at all often found to be mutually exclusive.
Beyond is ‘Meads,’ where ‘Domum’ is yearly held, and beyond, again, ‘New Meads,’ with its magnificent sward, its lofty trees, and its memories of ‘Eton Match’; and right away again, across the river, ‘Hills’ lies in full view—St. Catherine’s Hill, where Winchester boys in earlier days repaired for recreation on ‘remedies’ or holidays, the joys of which may be followed out in full in Bompas’s delightful life of Frank Buckland.
“Manners makyth man”—one is tempted to wonder if more may not here be meant than meets the ear, and whether ‘manners,’ in its Latin equivalent mores at least, does not wrap up a punning allusion, after the method so dear to that age, to Warden Morys, to whose hands, on the erection of the building, Wykeham first committed the future of his great college. But be that as it may, the emblem seems to sum up the spirit of the college with literal fidelity. Passing through its chambers, its chapel, its courts, its cloisters, one is sadly tempted to linger to recall the memory of this great headmaster, or recount the quaint stories told of this famous warden or that, and the names of Ken, Arnold, Goddard, Gabell, Huntingford, Barter, rise almost instinctively to one’s lips. We shall find their memories all piously preserved and commemorated whether in portrait, tablet, or building, as for instance the Memorial Gateway erected as a memorial of the old Wykehamists who fell in the South African War; but here we may not stop, and those who wish to do so can follow out their story in Leach’s Winchester College or Adams’s delightful Wykehamica. But more striking than the past, the noble traditions nobly preserved is the vitality in the present. ‘Sainte Marie College’ has always known how to adapt herself successfully, as age succeeded age, to the requirements of the day, and has paid the truest respect to the Founder’s wishes in never allowing herself to grow old. There is no frost, mingled with the kindliness of age, in Winchester College.