Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester and translator of the King James Bible

Nigel Calder, distinguished populariser of science

E H Carr, historian, author of The History of the Soviet Union and What is History?

Lynn Chadwick, Britain's greatest sculptor in metal of the Twentieth Century, his work The Beast adorns the school grounds 

Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1974-80

Alan Duncan, Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, MP

Henry R.H. Hall, Egyptologist and historian

Ionwerth Edwards, Egyptologist and Author

William Hailey, Governor of the Punjab and later the United Provinces, most distinguished member of Indian Civil Service

Conn Iggulden, Best-selling author of "Emperor" series

Sir James Jeans, Astronomer Royal, 'new physicist’, 'Quantum theorist'

Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Home Secretary 1924-1929

William Juxon, Archbishop of Canterbury, he attended Charles I on the scaffold in 1649

Boris Karloff, the original Frankenstein, stage name of William Pratt, OMT

Thomas Kyd, Elizabethan dramatist and author of The Spanish Tragedy

Alfred Marshall, economist, creator of the Cambridge Economics Tripos

Reginald Maudling, politician

Richard Mulcaster, the school’s first Head Master, a visionary educationalist, thought by many to be the model for Shakespeare's Holofernes

Titus Oates, (expelled) Troublemaker and conspirator

Samuel Palmer, visionary landscape painter

Michael Peschardt, distinguished foreign correspondent for the BBC

Martin Rowson, Cartoonist

Pat Sharp, radio DJ and television presenter

Sir Edmund Spenser, poet, author of The Faerie Queene and Lord Deputy of Ireland

Sir Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff

Sir John E. Sulston, Nobel Laureate (2002)

Paul Sussman, Best-selling author of "The lost army of Cambyses"

John Timpson, radio presenter

James Twining, Best-selling thriller writer ("The Double Eagle" and "The Black Sun")

John Walter, founder of The Times newspaper

John Webster, Jacobean dramatist and author of The Duchess of Malfi

Bulstrode Whitelocke, Civil War politician who enshrined the principle that only parliament could dissolve parliament.

The Company coat of arms

The Coat of Arms of the Company is occasionally used by the school, although we use more often the "Agnus Dei", "the Lamb in Glory": crest and seal of the Company since 1586; this symbolises the close relationship between the school and the Merchant Taylors' Company.

A family of schools

Boys at Merchant Taylors' are part of the Merchant Taylors' company family of schools that embraces Merchant Taylors' Crosby (Boys and girls), King's Macclesfield (1502) and Wolverhampton Grammar School (1512) amongst others that include Foyle & Londonderry College (1617),Wallingford (1659) as well as St John's Prep School in Northwood. The schools compete against each other at sporting events and also collaborate in events like the Lord Mayors' Show or the Millennium Art Exhibition at the Barbican as well as Musical events. In later life, the network formed by old boys' of these schools is a strong one and OMTs share a common formative experience with the Old Crosbeians, KSMFPA members, Old Wulfrunians and other alumni and alumnae. Below are some of the schools that joined with MTS on the company float at a recent Lord Mayor's Show in the City of London.

A brief History of Merchant Taylors School (Part 1)

 The school in Suffolk Lane

The history of Merchant Taylors' School, like that of any other school of similar age and type, is closely wedded to the events and characters of its time and provides exemplary material for the study of historical events, individuals and institutions. While one purpose in providing this account is to tell the story of this school in particular, it is not the only purpose for there is much here which is worthy of study for its own sake and which may prove useful to pupils and teachers elsewhere. There is much to compare with modern conditions in all schools and most informed people will see many parallels between events and tendencies through four centuries and the present day. There is much about religion, the switch from Catholicism to Protestantism and the upheavals that brought in its wake, and, naturally, about education and the way the English system has favoured 'academic' studies rather than the practical.

Foundation

The school was founded in 1561 by members of the Merchant Taylors' Company. The site of the original school was a manor house called the Manor of the Rose in the parish of St. Lawrence Pountney in the City of London. The school remained on this site until 1875 when it moved to Charterhouse Square, moving again in 1933 to Sandy Lodge in Northwood. MTS was not the first school to be founded by members of the Merchant Taylors' Company for the Tudor period in England was a period of expansion for education. Sir John Percival (Master of the Company in 1485, Lord Mayor of London in 1498) established a grammar school at Macclesfield in 1502, while in 1508 his widow founded one at St. Mary's Wike in Cornwall (which moved to Launceston shortly thereafter). Also in 1508, Sir Steven Jenyns (Master in 1490, Lord Mayor in 1508) founded Wolverhampton Grammar School which still maintains strong links with the Company. Many of the earlier Tudor schools were attached to monasteries and were dissolved after 1535 by Henry VIII and his son Edward VI, only to re-emerge after 1550, some of them even bearing Edward's name as founder. MTS missed these turbulent times being founded instead at the opening of the new queen's reign and in a period of cultural richness and advancement.

Plague, Fire and Religion

Being in the City of London and having pupils from a wide range of backgrounds, the school experienced many of the social, political and economic events at first hand and its masters sometimes became embroiled in them. One recurring event was plague which had a damaging effect on the school and its pupils. When the plague appeared, as in 1592, 1603, 1626, 1630, 1637 and 1666 , the school was obliged to break up, it may have lost pupils and was sometimes unable to take on new ones. The Head Master, Nicholas Gray, in 1626 complained of the loss of pupils and was given £20 to keep the school going; in 1630 he was given £40. Many parents kept their sons away from school and boarders were summoned home. The school was closed for at least a year 1n 1636 and 1637 with no new boys admitted until the contagion abated. The outbreak of 1666 was curtailed by the Great Fire which started on 2 September close to Suffolk Lane and completely destroyed the school buildings. In the aftermath of the fire the headmaster and ushers gathered what pupils they could and carried on the work of the school in temporary accommodation in Kentish Town. In 1672 the school had just 155 pupils on roll but by 1675 it was rebuilt on the same site and reopened. The Head Master of this time, John Goad, was a tower of strength to the school and its pupils but in 1681 he was dismissed for alleged sympathy with Catholic doctrines.

Curriculum and Inspection

In 1606 a member of the Company called Robert Dow instigated the process of 'probation' or inspection whereby the Court would visit the school three times each year and observe the school at work. Dow was concerned that the school was not meeting the challenge of being one of the great schools of the time and needed regular inspection to maintain and raise its standards. The Court appointed a committee to investigate and concluded:

'Being situate neere the middest of this honourable and renowned citty is famous throughout all England ...First, for number of schollers, it is the greateste schoole included under one roofe. Secondly, the schollers are taught jointly by one master and three ushers. Thirdly it is a schoole for liberty most free, being open especially for poore mens children, as well of all nations, as for the merchauntailors themselves'.

The probation was imposed without consultation with the school masters. During the probation the headmaster was required to open his copy of Cicero at random and read out a passage to the Sixth form. The boys had to copy the passage from dictation and then translate it, first into English, then into Greek and then into Latin verse. After this they had to write a passage of Latin and some verses on some topic chosen for the day. This was for the morning - in the afternoon the process was repeated in Greek, based on the Greek Testament, Aesop's Fables, "or some other very easie Greeke author". The standard in Greek was not as high as in Latin but Hebrew was also taught.

This form of inspection was also the model for teaching every day of the school year, there being no maths or science in the curriculum. The pattern of teaching seen in the Probations at MTS. was described in a popular work published in 1660, A New Discovery of the Art of Teaching Schoole by Charles Hoole. Points made by Hoole which give a guide to the nature of education at this time include:

• 6.00 a.m. was considered the time for children to start their studies but 7.00 a.m. was more common
• pupils of upper forms were appointed to give lessons to younger ones
• pupils were required to examine each other in pairs
• children frequently went to 'Writing-schooles' at the end of the school day, the purpose of which was to 'learn a good hand'. Good handwriting was supposed to be a condition of entry to a school like MTS but Hayne for one tended to ignore it and was eventually dismissed for, among other things, low standards of hand writing. In Germany at this time there were Writing Schools too and many citizens attended only these in order to learn sufficient skills for commerce and trade; English businessmen founded schools which encouraged an academic curriculum based on the classics.

A Headmaster's Lot...

The Head Master William Hayne (1599-1624) presided over these new methods of examination but his success here did not save him from dismissal for purported financial misdemeanours including the selling of text books to pupils for profit, and receiving gifts of money at the end of term and on Shrove Tuesday when the 'Victory Penny' might be presented by pupils. William Staple (headmaster 1634-1644) fell victim to contemporary politics. In October 1643 Parliament ordered 'That the Committee for plundered Ministers shall have power to enquire after malignant School-masters'. In March 1644 Staple was ordered to appear before this committee but as a royalist he had no intention of so doing and he was subsequently dismissed, forcing the Company to seek a new Head Master.

The next Head Master William Dugard (1644-1661) also ran into trouble when in 1649 he acquired a printing press and published a pamphlet by Claudius Salmasius, a continental sympathiser with Charles I, entitled Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo. Dugard was arrested and imprisoned but the pamphlet was not actually published and his cousin Sir James Harrington was able to exert sufficient influence to have him released. In 1647 Dugard had been appointed a member of the Stationers Company but he did not declare his interests to the Court and they were most annoyed at this extra-curricular activity. In 1652, a puritanical and intolerant time, Dugard again put his head above the parapet with his publication of Catechesis Ecclesiarum Poloniae et Lithuaniae, which you may gather from the title was not written in praise of Luther, Cromwell or Protestantism. The work was seized and publicly burned yet Dugard once again survived as headmaster, requiring only that he should give up his printing enterprise. At this time the school fees were set at 2s2 or 5s per quarter or nothing but Dugard charged a variety of amounts and the number of pupils was down on the 250 expected by the Company. When he left in 1661 he set up a new school in Coleman Street and took a number of MTS boys with him.

A notorious Pupil and a Notorious Event

The dismissal of John Goad may have been strongly influenced by the accusations of Titus Oates who was a pupil at MTS for a few months in 1665-66. Oates had similarly brief stays at other schools, being dismissed from each in turn. In 1678 Oates 'discovered' the 'Popish Plot' which was supposed to include a threat to kill Charles II but was later found to be a hoax dreamed up by Oates. William Smith, a master at MTS and later headmaster at the Brewers' School in Islington, writes of his first encounter with Oates thus:

'In the year 1664 he was brought to Merchant Taylors' School, as a free Schollar, by Nicholas Delves, Esq., now living; he happening to be in Books that were taught in my Form, I was sent down to receive him into the School, which I did in an unlucky hour. And truly, the first trick he played me was That he cheated me of our Entrance-Money which his father sent me, which the Doctor generously confessed in his Greatness at Whitehall and very Honestly paid me then.'

In 1676 Oates caught up with Smith and accused him of involvement in another imaginary plot so the latter was obliged to commit perjury to escape punishment. In the MTS Probation Book Oates was initially listed as 'The saviour of the nation, first discoverer of ye damnable Popish Plot in 1678; in 1685 a postscript was added: 'Perjurd upon Record and a Scoundrell Fellow'. In this suspicious climate just a whiff of Romanism was enough to condemn a man like Goad. After his dismissal Goad became a member of the Roman Catholic Church.

King James and the House of Orange

The headmastership fell vacant again in 1686, at which point King James tried to force his nominee James Lee on the Company. The election was postponed and the Master, Sir William Dodson, persuaded James to withdraw his nomination. James Lee, formerly Second Usher at MTS and then Head Master at St Saviour's Free School, Southwark, then stood against Ambrose Bonwicke but lost. Bonwicke, OMT, was a former pupil of Goad and had an acute mind but he too suffered dismissal for his sentiments. James abdicated in 1688, William and Mary acceded and men were obliged once again to proclaim their loyalties. The majority avoided controversy by swearing allegiance to 'the king', whoever he may be, but Bonwicke was more scrupulous and delayed for a year before the Court was forced by Act of Parliament to hear his oath of allegiance. Bonwicke declared himself a supporter of James and was duly dismissed.

Under Matthew Shortyng, Head Master, 1691-1707, the top boys of the Sixth began to be called 'The Table' and 'The Bench', with nine at the Table, the captain and eight monitors, and nine at the Bench, called prompters because they prompted the monitors on election day. In 1710 Ambrose Bonwicke, son of the former Head Master, was captain of the school and refused to read prayers for King William on St. Barnabas Day. Despite his intellectual prowess his family's continuing support for James cost him his election to St. John's Oxford and he went to St. John's Cambridge instead. At this time there was a shortage of places at the school as its reputation for scholarship and consequent chance of a university education attracted parents from all over the country. In 1750 a regulation was passed that boys should not be eligible for election to St. John's Oxford unless they had been in the school for at least three years.

One pupil who would not have qualified for election under this rule was Robert Clive, a pupil from 1738-1739 who completed his education at Shrewsbury in his native Shropshire. The Head Master at this time was John Criche, OMT, a man who had occupied every position in the school and was not predisposed to change it. Criche was also a Jacobite and the school suffered because parents were unwilling to send their sons to a school where anti-dynastic sentiments might prevail. He died in office at the age of 80 and by then the school numbers had fallen from 244 to 116.

A Modern Curriculum?

The next Head Master, James Townley, OMT, was in office from 1760 to 1768. Criche's financial situation before him had become desperate which explained his continuance in office into his 80th year and the Company duly raised the headmaster's salary from £10 to £100. Salaries were at this time boosted by 'capitation grants' so Criche suffered badly while a more successful headmaster could do rather better. Townley had worked at Christ's Hospital School which had the Royal Mathematical School and included maths in its curriculum. He therefore proposed the introduction of maths at MTS in 1760 but the Court deferred consideration and subsequently dropped the matter. Townley did succeed, however, in introducing Geography to the curriculum. Like Mulcaster and numerous pupils before him Townley was keen on the stage and in 1762 proposed the staging of a Latin play at the school, partly to regain some interest in the school which had waned in the last year's of Criche's headmastership. Townley wrote a successful play, High Life Below Stairs, which was staged at Drury Lane by David Garrick and proved very popular. The identity of the author was kept secret and most assumed it was written by Garrick rather than a schoolmaster.

Schools in the 18th century were not generally in good shape, with understaffing leading to poor teaching, brutal enforcement of discipline, lack of supervision outside school and self-government by the pupils. The London schools were more successful in retaining numbers but apart from Christ's Hospital and Westminster none changed its curriculum and classics reigned supreme until the mid 19th century. As Gibbon wrote: 'A finished scholar may emerge from the head of Westminster or Eton in total ignorance of the business and conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the 18th century.'

A Schoolboy's Memoirs - Flagellation, Flogging and Revenge

The next three Head Masters over the period 1778-1819, Green, Bishop and Cherry were all OMTs. One of Bishop's pupils, Charles Matthews, went on to become a successful actor. His memoirs, from the late 18th century, include these observations:

'I was now translated from Dominie the flagellator's garden of knowledge in St. Martin-in-the-Fields to Merchant Tailors' School, to gain what Pope so aptly terms 'a dangerous thing', a little learning. This was about the year 1786. Bishop, the head master, wore a huge powdered wig, larger than any other bishop's wig. It invited invasion, and we shot paper darts with such singular dexterity into the protruding bush behind that it looked like 'a fretful porcupine'. He had chalkstone knuckles too, which he used to rap on my head like a bag of marbles, and, eccentric as it may appear, pinching was his favourite amusement, which he brought to great perfection. There were six forms. I entered the school at the lowest, and got no higher than the fifth, but was of course alternately under the care and tuition of the four masters. Gardner, the lowest in the grade, was the only mild person amongst them; the others had a little too much, and perhaps he had much too little, of the severe in him for his station. Two more cruel tyrants than Bishop and Rose never existed... Lord, the fourth master, was rather an invalid, and, I believe, had been prescribed gentle exercise; he therefore put up for, and was the successful candidate for, the flogging department. Rose was so adept at the cane, that I once saw a boy strip, after a thrashing from him, that he might expose his barbarous cruelty, when the back was actually striped with dark streaks like a zebra.

Before I left the school the pupils had the satisfaction of witnessing the administration of the lex talionis in a most summary and somewhat awful manner. The boy I spoke of, like Zanga [in The Revenge], remembered the blow, and on proceeding to college, kept up the recollection of this most gratuitous barbarity; for, shortly afterwards, he came into the cloisters during a play-hour, went to Rose's apartment, lured him to the door of it, and horse-whipped him there before the admiring and approving scholars until he roared for mercy.

This gave the occasion to the abolition of flogging in this school; for, the next time Lord made the attempt, at a concerted signal (the rebellion had been long in preparation), all the boys, to the number of two hundred, rushed from the school-room into the lobby, where punishment was usually inflicted, hustled the pedagogue, rescued the victim and scattered the birch into fragments, each one carrying off a twig in token of victory. We then returned into school with perfect coolness, having announced our determination una voce never again to submit to such a degradation. To this arrangement the heads were compelled to submit; for so well was the spirited measure organised, and so completely carried into effect, that no ringleader could be pointed out as an example, and nothing short of the expulsion of the whole number could have been resorted to. The affair, therefore, was hushed up.'

Click here to read Part 2