beside the less cold-blooded cruelty of the traitor. Do you fully comprehend me, sir?"

"I think so, my lord. Your intention is, if I take you correctly, to make the case, if it be suitable, the groundwork for an attack on the Government of Ireland."

“In which I am not to appear.” "Of course, my lord; though possibly with no objection that it should be known how far your sympathy is with a free discussion of the whole state of Ireland?"

"You apprehend me aright, sir -a free discussion of the whole state of Ireland."

"I go, therefore, without any concert with your lordship at present. I take this step entirely at my own instance?"

"You do, sir. If matters eventually should take the turn which admits of any intervention on my part-any expression of opinion any elucidation of sentiments attributed to me-I will be free to make such in the manner I deem suitable.'

"In case this person should prove one, either from his character or the degree in which he has implicated himself, unfitted for your lordship's object, I am to drop the negotiation?"

Rather, I should say, sir, you are not to open it."

"I meant as much," said Sewell, with some irritation.

"It is an occasion, sir, for careful action and precise expression. I have no doubt you will acquit yourself creditably in each of these respects. Are you already acquaint ed with Mr. Spencer?"

"We have met at the club, my lord; he at least knows who I ám."

"That will be quite sufficient. One point more-I have no need to caution you as to secrecy-this is a matter which cannot be talked of."

"That you may rely on, my lord; reserve is so natural to me, that I have to put no strain upon my manner to remember it."

"I shall be curious to hear the result of your visit-that is, if you be permitted to visit the Bridewell. Will you do me the favour to come to me at once?"

Sewell promised this faithfully, and withdrew.

"If ever an old fool wanted to run his head into a noose," muttered he, "here is one; the slightest blunder on my part, intentional or not, and this great Baron of the Exchequer might be shown up as abetting treason. To be sure, he has given me nothing under his hand-nothing in writing--I wonder was that designedly or not; he is so crafty in the middle of all his passion." Thus meditating, went on his mission.

he

It is not always necessary to begin from the beginning, or to trace the fortunes of Troy from the hatching of Castor and Pollux. Westminster claims to be the oldest school in England; and if this only means that there was a school in Westminster from time immemorial, it may be so far true, though the same claim might be made with equal justice for Winchester, and probably for other less distinguished cities. There is, indeed, one very circumstantial piece of autobiography, purporting to be by a Norman monk, secretary to the Great Conqueror, in which he speaks of his own education at Westminster in the days of Edward the Confessor; and records how Queen Edgitha sometimes met him as he came out of school, and after "posing" him in grammar and verse-making,* sent him off rejoicing with "three or four pieces of money from the hand of her maidens," and an order for some good things in the royal refectory. But Sir Francis Palgrave, and other remorseless historical sceptics, have overthrown all faith in Abbot Ingulph's history; and the schoolboy days of this very "old Westminster" are probably about as historical as the modern Tom Brown's.

* "De literis et versu meo opponebat."

lenge each other to a contest of grammar and versification t-a custom which Stow speaks of as existing in his own days with very little alteration:-

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"I myself, in my youth, have yearly seen, on the eve of St. Bartholomew the apostle, the scholars of divers grammarschools repair to the churchyard of St. boarded under a tree, some one scholar Bartholomew, where, upon hath stepped up, and there opposed and answered, till he were of some better scholar overcome and put down; and then the overcomer, taking his place, did like as the first, and in the end the best opposer and answerer had rewards. . . . I remember there repaired to these exercises (amongst others) the master and scholars of St. Paul's, London, and St. Peter's, Westminster."

But all this was long anterior to the foundation of the present collegiate school of Westminster. This can only date its existence at the earliest from 1540, when the monastic house was dissolved, a bishopric founded out of its confiscated revenues, and a school for fortyscholars, with an upper and an undermaster, established by charter of Henry VIII. There is no doubt that the school was in actual operation, since the names of its earliest masters have been preserved. John Adams, who was first appointed, was succeeded by Alexander Nowell, well known among the Reformers, and subsequently Dean of St. Paul's. He taught through Edward's short reign; but under Mary the whole reformed establishment — bishop,

chapter, and school-was swept away, and Nowell only escaped the stake by taking ship for Germany.

Elizabeth, almost immediately upon her accession, restored her father's foundation in every particular, and gave to the college the statutes which are more or less observed to this day. Besides the forty scholars on the foundation, these statutes provide for the admission of eighty others to be taught in the school, under the names of pensionarii, oppidani, and peregrini. Of these classes, the pensionarii were equivalent to the old commensales of Eton and Winchester. They were to be not more than eighty in number; to be lodged with some of the authorities of the college, who were to be responsible for their conduct and to guarantee their payments; and to dine with the scholars at their table in hall at a certain fixed charge. The dean was allowed to have six of these boarders (who would probably be boys of superior rank, like the warden's commensales at Winchester), the head-master four, the usher and each of the prebendaries two. The oppidani would comprise all those boys who lived in the city with their parents or friends, sufficiently within reach of the school to attend as day-scholars; and the peregrini were those who might be sent from a distance for education, lodging and boarding, as was the early custom at all great schools, with any neighbouring householder who might be induced to undertake such a charge.

The election of the forty Queen's scholars was to be after the manner of Winchester and Eton. The candidates were to be examined by the Dean of Christ-Church, Oxford, and the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, with the assistance of a Master of Arts from each college (called "posers 66 or electioners") and the head-master of the school.

A preference was to be given in the election to the sons of tenants of the chapter estates, and the choristers, who were originally taught in the school, were also to be preferred as scholars if found competent; but it is doubtful whether even in the earliest times this provision was ever attended to. "A child's place" at Westminster, both in the days of Elizabeth and of the Stuarts, became commonly a matter of favour which secretaries of state, and even monarchs themselves, were not ashamed to ask for their friends, and which deans and chapters were very ready to bestow. Promotion by merit, though unquestionably it existed in theory, was very little known in practice in the primitive age of scholastic foundations. The scholars had their board and instruction entirely free, with an allowance for "livery "-now a gown and college waistcoat-which, no doubt, in those earlier times covered the greater part of their expenses for dress. After four years' residence, a certain number of these boys were to be elected annually either to Christ-Church as students, or to Trinity, Cambridge, as scholars on the foundation: three to each, if there were vacancies enough in the college, and if so many were found eligible; and more, if it could be done conveniently.* Thus, as at Eton and Winchester, a complete course of liberal education was provided for a boy of industry and ability, without cost to himself or his parents; for a studentship or scholarship at either university was intended to be a sufficient maintenance for its holder, and was so to a youth of quiet and studious habits. And, as in the case of Wykeham's and Henry VI.'s foundations, the stewards of the founder's liberality were to be those in whose hands the interests of learning and the rights of the scholar were held to be safest-the elder collegiate

body of scholars and divines to which the school was attached.

In early times, at least, the trust was well discharged. More than one Dean of Westminster was a nursing father to the school. Gabriel Goodman (of whom Fuller says, "Goodman was his name, and goodness was his nature"), who was appointed to the deanery the year after Elizabeth's reconstruction of her father's foundation, and continued in the dignity for nearly forty years, did everything to promote the comfort and welfare of the "Queen's scholars." Some of the old monastic buildings had been allotted for their accommodation; but he is said to have first collected them into the large schoolroom now in use, which had been the ancient dormitory of the Benedictines. Holding the prebend of Chiswick, he procured the conveyance of the "college-house" there to the chapter as a pest-house, or, as it would now be called, a sanatorium, in which the whole body, prebendaries, masters, and scholars, might take refuge in case of contagious sickness reaching Westminster; and he planted a row of elm trees there with his own hands, some of which are said to be still standing. It will be seen that at a future time this retreat was taken advantage of.* The excellent Lancelot Andrews succeeded Goodman in the deanery, and in his hearty love for the school. He exercised a fatherly superintendence over masters and scholars (fulfilling, in fact, the theory of the statutes, that the dean should be to the whole community" quasi mens in corpore"); not only taking care that the best classical authors were read in the school, and having the exercises of the boys brought to him for commendation or correction, but

even, as a grateful pupil tells us, "frequently in his own person supplying the place of head-master and usher for a week together." He often had the elder boys with him in the evenings at the deanery, and there gave them private instruction in the elements of Hebrew, as well as in Latin and Greek; and when he walked out, as he often did by way of recreation, to his prebendal house at Chiswick, it was very seldom, says the same quaint writer, "without a brace or two of this young fry" as his companions; "and in that wayfaring leisure he had a singular dexterity to fill those narrow vessels as with a funnel."t Dean Williams (subsequently Archbishop of York and Lord Keeper to James I.), who succeeded a few years afterwards, also took a lively interest in the welfare of the Queen's scholars-an interest which did not cease after he had become Bishop of Lincoln, still holding the deanery in commendam. He increased the royal foundation by the addition of four boys (to be chosen either from his native Wales or from his diocese of Lincoln), who were to be educated gratuitously, and to be boarded with the Queen's scholars, and lodged in a special chamber; to wear gowns of violet colour, and to go off as exhibitioners to St. John's College, Cambridge. But, unluckily, Bishop Williams neglected to provide sufficient funds for these benevolent purposes; and though the "Bishop's boys "received their violet gowns and their free education, they had to board themselves with the town-boys; and their university provision, such as it was, after a while was lost to them entirely.

The low numbers of the school for many years having furnished no candidates for the St.

John's scholarships, the University Commissioners of 1856 seized upon this fact as a pretext for suppressing them altogether. The blue gown, which had become anything but an honourable distinction, has now been given up, and the four Bishop's boys, who are still elected, have no other privileges than the remission of the usual school fees, which the dividends of the foundation just suffice to pay.

The first Westminster scholars were elected to the universities in 1562-two years only after the refoundation of the school by Elizabeth-when one was sent to Oxford and one to Cambridge. During the next ten years, sometimes two and sometimes three were elected to each university. But ChristChurch was not at first eager to welcome the Westminster students. Of the three elected in 1554, the college would only admit onepleading in excuse the want of room. In 1575, two of those elected were refused admission as students by Dr. Piers, then dean. But the claimants, Carow and Ravis, pleaded their own cause manfully. "Non mea solum, sed totius Westmonasterii res agitur," said Carow, with equal truth and spirit, in a letter to Lord Burleigh. The remonstrance was successful, and Ravis, in future years, rose to be himself dean of Christ-Church, and to maintain in that capacity the rights of Westminster.

*

The first master of the school after Elizabeth's reconstruction was Nicholas Udall or Uvedale, who appears to have been appointed in the previous reign, when the school was all but in abeyance. Though he is said to have been an excellent scholar, his reputation in other respects is by no means a creditable one. He had been dismissed some years before, when a very young man, from the head-mastership of Eton on a charge of theft, and even of worse misconduct, which

to have had at least some foundation.t Of his conduct in his new position there is no record, nor is much known of his immediate successors-Randall, Browne, Howlen, and Grant-except that the latter had been educated at the school, and was apparently the first Westminster scholar appointed to the head-mastership. In 1593 William Camden, who had for some years been second-master, and during that time, in his holidays and leisure hours, had produced his great work Britannia,' succeeded Grant on his resignation. Camden's name belongs not more to Westminster School than to the history of English literature; but the account which he gives himself of his mastership (in a letter to Archbishop Usher) must be quoted, for the light which it throws upon the early history of the school:

"God so blessed my labours that the now Bishops of Durham, London, and St. Asaph, to say nothing of persons now employed in eminent places abroad, and many of especial note at home of all degrees, do acknowledge themselves to have been my scholars. Yea, I brought there to Church divers gentlemen of Ireland, as Walshes, Nugents, O'Raileys, Shees, the eldest son of the Archbishop of Cassilis, Peter Lombard, a merchant's able docility, and divers others bred son of Wallingford, a youth of admirpopishly."

These young Irish gentlemen, sent over to England for Education, were no doubt pensionarii with Camden as head-master. A letter

from Sir Robert Cecil, about the date of which Camden speaks, curiously illustrates his account of these Irish pupils, and at the same time shows that the dean's privilege of receiving boarders was at least occasionally exercised in the case of youths of rank. Cecil is speaking of David Barry, son of Lord Barry, afterwards second Earl of Buttevant :

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