List of Fame E. D. Green, Mr.D. AMERICAN ANNALS OF EDUCATION. SEPTEMBER, 1839. ART. I.-THE HISTORY OF WESTMINSTER SCHOOL. THIS School, which ranks among the first establishments in the British empire for the instruction of youth, was founded by Queen Elizabeth in the year 1560. Henry VIII. when he caused the monasteries to be dissolved, declared his determination to restore some of them under a new character, and on different foundations: he accordingly, gave episcopal distinction to Westminster Abbey; and on the 17th of December, in the year 1540, erected it by letters patent into a cathedral, with an establishment to consist of a bishop, a dean, and twelve prebendaries. Thomas Thirlby, then Dean of the King's Chapel, was appointed the Bishop, with the entire county of Middlesex, except the village of Fulham, for his diocese. The late abbot was appointed the Dean, the prior and five of the monks were made Prebendaries, four of them became minor Canons, and four were sent as students to the two Universities. The rest of the monastic confraternity were dismissed from their cloister with pensions, to discharge the functions of their character in pious seclusion or in parochial offices, as their different tempers or inclinations might dispose them. In a short time after the foundation, the king endowed the bishopric with the abbot's house for a palace, and a revenue, taken from the estates of the dissolved abbey, amounting, according to Strype, to the annual value of eight hun dred and four pounds; while the archives of the church, which Windmore, in his History of Westminster Abbey, considers as the best authority, settle it at no more than five hundred and eightysix pounds thirteen shillings and four pence. The patent for the endowment of the dean and chapter was not granted till the 5th of August, 1542; when lands were assigned for this purpose from the estate of the late monastery, to the annual amount of two thousand one hundred and sixtyfour pounds. The abbeys of Evesham and Pershore in Worcestershire, Merton in Surry, Newstede in Nottinghamshire, Mountgrace in Yorkshire, Bardeney, Haverholme and Grimsby, both nuns and Austin friars, in Lincolnshire, were also called upon to contribute to the yearly value of four hundred and thirtyfour pounds. By this establishment the choir was formed on a more enlarged scale than it is at present. At the same time, the chapter was charged with the annual payment of four hundred pounds to ten readers in Divinity, Law, Physic, Hebrew, and Greek, five in each of the Universities, and likewise with the stipends of twenty students in those places, amounting to one hundred and sixtysix pounds thirteen shillings and four pence. In other parts of the new arrangement, particularly in the establishment of two masters and forty grammarscholars, it was the same as the present foundation of Queen Elizabeth. William Fitz-Stephens, in his Life of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, describing London, observes, that the three chief churches in the metropolis had schools attached to them, which Stow represents as being St Paul's, Westminster Abbey, and St Peter's Cornhill. All the great monastic institutions appear to have had schools belonging to their establishments, though it may be concluded, from the wretched state of learning among the clergy in the early periods of our history, that the objects of instruction in those seminaries were very confined, and, probably, went no farther than was absolutely necessary to be known by the children of the respective choirs, and to prepare them for the inferior ministerial duties of the ceremonial office. It appears, however, from the latter part of the reign of Edward III. to the dissolution of the abbey, that a salary was paid by the almoner of the monastery to a schoolmaster, who, in the accounts of that officer, is described as "magis ter scholarium, pro eruditione puerorum grammaticorum," and is evidently distinguished from the person appointed to teach singing to the choristers: though it will not surely be carrying conjecture too far, if it should be presumed, that their grammatical knowledge did not extend beyond the necessity of reading the Missal. Westminster retained its episcopal character but a short period, as it was suppressed by Edward VI. in the third year of his reign. On the 29th of March, 1550, Bishop Thirlby surrendered his bishopric, in submission to the royal will, and the diocese was reunited to that of London. Edward VI. died July 6, 1553, and the church soon felt the effects of that bigoted attachment to the Papal power which distinguished the persecuting reign of his successor, by whom it was restored to its monastic character, and subjected to the predominating power of the see of Rome. Cardinal Pole, who had been appointed to the legatine office, gave the new abbot possession, assumed the power of recompensing the chapter, and forming the regulations for its conduct, by his own delegated power, without requiring the royal assent to confirm it. In this re-establishment, the school of Henry VIII. does not appear to have been continued in any form under the cardinal's administration. Queen Mary died November 17, 1558, and the first parliament of Queen Elizabeth gave her all the religious houses which had been erected or restored by her royal sister, in their actual condition on the first day of the preceding October. Westminster Abbey was now destined to undergo another change it was re-suppressed as a monastery, and the queen re-established it as a new foundation, in the form of a collegiate church, which it still retains, and endowed it with all the lands which were possessed by the late abbots and its monks. This foundation, as it has been already observed, was in a great measure the same as that of Henry VIII. It consisted of a dean and the same number of prebendaries, with an upper and under master, and the same number of scholars, which have continued without alteration to the moment when this page is written. Dean Goodman, who was the second person elevated to the deanery of the church by Queen Elizabeth, appears to have been very zealous in promoting its interest. To avoid the ravages of the plague, which, in those times, frequently visited the metropolis, the dean, who also held the prebend of Chiswick, obtained the privilege for his church of being the tenant in perpetuity of the prebendal estate; that it might be a place of refuge from any pestilential or epidemic disease, for the chapter, the masters of the school, and the scholars. It is, indeed, in his time that the Chapter-Book of the abbey first takes notice of the school, to which he seems to have paid the most serious attention. He brought the scholars into one spacious chamber, regulated the commons, and added to the accommodation of the masters. He had also some difference with the Deans of ChristChurch, Oxford, and the Masters of Trinity College, Cambridge, respecting the number of scholars to be elected from this school. It may be also reasonably supposed, that he influenced Cecil, then Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1594, to give a perpetual annuity of twenty marks, to be distributed among the scholars elected from hence to the two Universities. Dr Lancelot Andrews succeeded Dean Goodman, in his regard for the school as well as in the first station of the collegiate church on which it depends. Hacket, in his Life of Bishop Williams, and he may be supposed to be familiar with the subject, relates, that Dean Andrews paid an anxious attention to the improvement of the scholars; that he often supplied the place of the masters, by ordering their exercises to be brought to him; and that he never went to Chiswick without taking two of the scholars with him. It is also added, that he frequently sent for the uppermost boys, and employed entire evenings in their instruction, which he conducted in a manner replete with mildness and encourage ment. During the civil war, a period by no means favorable to the advancement of learning, and palticularly to those institutions which were attached to, and derived their support from, the church, the dean and prebendaries of Westminster were in general dispersed, and the school, it is to be supposed, shared the same fate. Lambert Osbolstone, one "It is not known that the school was ever removed to Chiswick, since the time of Dr Busby. It is on record, that he resided there with some of the scholars in 1657.-LYSONS' Middlesex. of the prebendaries, is said, however, to have been an exception. Having been prosecuted in the Star Chamber by Archbishop Laud in the year 1638, he was thought a fit person to receive the favor and indulgence of the parliament, which might have been influenced by his suggestions and remonstrances, to show that subsequent care to the deserted church, which was manifested by both houses; who, by an ordinance dated November 18, 1645, consigned the government of it to a committee of eleven lords and twentytwo commoners. Among other general and specific regulations, this instrument contains the following clause: "And be it further ordained, that the said committee, or any seven or more of them, together with the Master of Trinity College in Cambridge, and the Master of the said school in Westminster, shall hereby have the like power to elect and chuse scholars into the said school, and thence into the Trinity College in Cambridge aforesaid, and to ChristChurch in Oxon, as by the statutes of the said college of Westminster was invested in the Deans of Westminster and Christ-Church, and Masters of Trinity College and Westminster School aforesaid: provided, nevertheless, when the said Dean or Master of Christ-Church aforesaid shall not be a delinquent to the parliament, his right to the election aforesaid, according to the said statutes, shall not hereby be impeached and the said committee, or any seven or more of them, are hereby further authorised to place poor men in in such alms-places belonging to the said collegiate church as shall from time to time become void." This protecting guardianship was further extended by an act passed in the House of Commons, in September, 1649, for the continuance and support of the school and almshouses of Westminster. It also orders, that the management of the college should be entrusted to fiftysix governors, of whom two or three alone were peers. The annual charge of the school, the almshouses, the weekly poor, the preachers or lecturers, the maintenance of the buildings, &c. was computed to amount at this time to 1900l. The estates vested in these governors were particularly specified; and the church remained subject to the control of this comImittee till the Restoration, in 1660. At that period, when Charles II. returned to take possession of his kingdom, the government and affairs of the na |