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doubtless amused, and who shared the kindly encouragement of the many noble ladies who took refuge in the Monastery at Bermondsey, while at the same time they can imagine the other division of their predecessors, the boys of St. Marie Overie, racing backwards and forwards to school, along Bankside, playing perhaps at times in the Bishop's Park, and possibly giving to the great William of Wykham, himself the founder of public school education in England, the first idea of his noble twin foundations of Winchester School and New College, Oxford.

It seems probable, if not certain that the determination of the inhabitants of St. Saviour's to restore their ancient schools, dates before the time of Elizabeth, though their actual charter was not obtained till her reign, for we are told that "the parishioners of St. Saviour's set a noble example to their neighbours in the establishment of their admirable free grammar school, and the inhabitants of St. Olave's were not slow to follow so enlightened an example." As St. Olave's dates its foundation, I believe from 1560, St. Saviour's must necessarily have been earlier.

Thomas Cure, the Queen's saddler, seems to have been the prime mover in the good work, and he, with William Bowker, Christopher Campbell, and other inhabitants of St. Saviour's, addressed the Queen, and asked for a charter which was granted in the following terms, that they, the aforesaid worthies "had, at their own great costs and pains, devised, erected and set up a grammar school, wherein the children of the poor as well as the rich inhabitants were freely brought up; that they had applied for a charter to establish a succession;" she therefore wills, "that it shall be one grammar school for education of the parishioners and inhabitants of St. Saviour's, to be called 'a Free Grammar School of the Parishioners of St. Saviour in

Southwark,' to have one master and one under master; six of the more discreet and sad inhabitants to be governors, by the name of Governors of the Possessions and Revenues and Goods of the Free Grammar School of the Parishioners of the Parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark, in the County of Surrey, incorporated." And these by perpetual succession fill up vacancies in their numbers with the advice of twelve of the most discreet and godliest inhabitants of the Borough,” selected by themselves; these again have power, "with the advice of the Bishop of Winchester, or, he absent, of any good learned man, to appoint a school-master and usher, from time to time, and also to purchase land.”

All that the parishioners obtained by this patent of Queen Elizabeth was the being made a corporate body in succession; the Queen gave them nothing to endow their school out of the funds which her father and her brother had both received from the Borough. In 1674, Mrs. Newcomen, whose name yet lives in the school still called after her, gave £5 a-year to increase the salary of the under master. In 1676 the school was burnt by the great fire which demolished so much that was old in the Borough, but it was very soon rebuilt.

In 1776 Dr. William Heberden, physician to George III., and who was for some time educated in this school, gave a donation of £500, three per cents., to increase the head master's salary. There were other benefactors at various times, so that the school has four exhibitions, three of £50, and one of £25 a-year to Oxford and Cambridge. The principal founder of these was John Bingham, also a saddler to Queen Elizabeth. He and Cure have both monuments in St. Saviour's Church, but their best memorial is the school they founded and endowed, and the succession of boys who have benefitted by their generosity.

Bishop van Mildert, the last Prince Bishop of Durham received his early education in this School, and many now living in high positions in the Church, besides two exLord Mayors testify to the soundness of the education. they have received in a school, whose traditions carry it far back into the middle ages, before the times of the Plantagenets, though by a sort of fiction Queen Elizabeth is considered as its founder, and her accession day the 17th of November is appointed for the annual commemoration of founders and benefactors. In 1840 the school was taken down, the site being required for the Borough Market. It was rebuilt in Sumner-street, the ground being given by the joint liberality of Dr. Sumner then Bishop of Winchester, and the Messrs. Pott, who held a lease of the ground at the time, and so it is that the school though removed from the classic neighbourood of Bankside, and from beneath the shadow of the Old Church stands on part of what was once the Bishop of Winchester's Park, and in a street bearing the name of a former Bishop. Since the changes in the Diocese, the Bishop of Rochester is now considered visitor of the School, and has shewn a lively interest in its welfare.

The people of Bermondsey were not long in following the example of St. Saviour's, and St. Olave's School was set on foot and constituted the free Grammar School of Queen Elizabeth of the parishioners of the parish of St. Olave's by letters patent issued in 1571. The school was built on the south side of Duke Street, leading from Tooley Street to London Bridge, but the ground being required for the London and Greenwich Railway Company, a fresh site was obliged to be found and the new school was erected in the parish of St. John, Horsley-Down. It was again disturbed by the Railway, and the present building is a handsome one in the Tudor style.

This school was formerly confined to the inhabitants of the two parishes of St. Olave and St. John, but during the last few years has been thrown open to other scholars on payment. It is now in a most flourishing condition.

The two schools of St. Saviour and St. Olave, though intended for the sons of poor as well as rich, are classical schools, though St. Olave's has schools of lower grade attached to it, and both have of late years added modern languages and modern science to their course. But two hundred years ago the classics were almost the only subjects of study, and Mrs. Newcomen left some houses. and land to provide for a certain number of boys and girls to be clothed and educated at the parish schools, and also for the clothing, in humble fashion, of poor widows of the parish. The value of this property has so increased, and the management has been so careful and conscientious, that two large schools, one for boys and one for girls, were built some few years ago in King Street in the Borough, where the children receive a sound commercial education, and the poor widows are still clothed. The charity is so important that one of the St. Saviour's wardens is called "The Newcomen's Warden." Their festival day is the 2nd of November, the birthday of their foundress.

Before I close this chapter let us remember, with due honour, the name of Edward Alleyne, founder of the college of God's gift, Dulwich, and there can be no more appropriate place than here, for he forms a connecting link between the subject of education and the amusements of Southwark. Alleyne was one of the band of actors and authors who lived, or played, or wrote on Bankside. He gained much fame as an actor, and like Shakespeare, seems to have been a man of high character and thrifty

habits. There is a story told by Aubrey, which I give for what it is worth, that in some play he was representing the person of the Arch-tempter, when Satan himself appeared, which gave him so great a shock that he retired from the stage, and devoted his property-which was large-to God's service. His scheme was intended to benefit the four parishes with which he was connected, Bishopsgate, where he was born, Southwark, where he had acted and principally made his money, St. Luke's, where he held property, Camberwell, where he lived in his later years. As matters are at present, Camberwell swallows up by far the lion's share.

In token of his humility he became a pensioner on his own charity, and lived in the College he had built.

CHAPTER X.

THE DRAMA AND SHAKESPEARE.

N a former Chapter I described how the earliest secular plays were probably acted in the courts of such old. Inns as abounded in our High Street, where the spectators stept out of their rooms on balconies which overhung the court, and watched the performances, rude enough, probably, in the courtyard below. Scenic representations have

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