rector of Lydiard Tregoze, Wiltshire (Gent. Mag. new ser. xxi. 194). ‘After taking holy orders,’ writes Mr. H. J. Hodgson, ‘Mr. Drury proved himself a sound theologian and a valuable assistant to the bishop of his diocese, an earnest preacher, and an active parish priest. … As a friend and companion he was most genial and affectionate, possessed of lively wit and humour, full of anecdote and badinage, but tempered with excellent tact and judgment, all combined with a modesty and absence of self-assertion.’
[Information kindly communicated by H. J. Hodgson, esq., and the Master of Caius; Burke's Landed Gentry, 4th edit., p. 395; Gent. Mag. 3rd ser. xiv. 660–1; Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1860, p. 175.]
DRURY, HENRY JOSEPH THOMAS (1778–1841), scholar, son of the Rev. Joseph Drury [q. v.], by Louisa, daughter of Benjamin Heath, D.C.L., of Exeter, was born at Harrow on 27 April 1778, and educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge (B.A. 1801, M.A. 1804), of which society he became a fellow. Drury became under-master, and afterwards master, of the lower school at Harrow, and among his pupils was Lord Byron (see a letter from Byron to Drury dated 18 Oct. 1814 in Moore's Life of Lord Byron). In 1820 he was presented to the rectory of Fingert. He died at Harrow on 5 March 1841. By his wife, Caroline, daughter of A. W. Taylor of Boreham Wood, Hertfordshire, he had a son Henry [q. v.]
Drury had a great reputation in his day as a classical scholar, but contented himself with editing selections from the classics for the use of Harrow School. He also formed a most valuable library of the Greek classics, both printed editions and manuscripts, which was sold after his death, two parts in 1827 for 8,917l. 13s., and the third in 1837 for 1,693l. He was an original member of the Roxburghe Club, London, and contributed to their collection a reprint of ‘Cock Lorell's Boat’ (1817) and ‘The Metrical Life of Saint Robert of Knaresborough’ (1824), from a manuscript in his possession, which was deciphered and transcribed by Joseph Haslewood the bibliographer. Among Drury's numerous friends were Dr. Dibdin the bibliographer, who mentions him several times in ‘The Bibliographical Decameron,’ and Lord Byron. In Moore's ‘Life of Lord Byron’ are to be found several letters from the poet to his former tutor, written in affectionate terms and without much regard to the propriety usually preserved in a correspondence with a divine.
[Gent. Mag. 1841, new ser. xvi. 323; some additional facts are to be found in Heathiana: Notes Genealogical and Biographical of the family of Heath, privately printed, 1881.]
DRURY, JOSEPH (1750–1834), head-master of Harrow School, son of Thomas Drury, a member of an old Norfolk family, was born in London on 11 Feb. 1750, was admitted scholar of Westminster in 1765, and was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1768 (Welch). He found himself unable to continue his residence at Cambridge through lack of means, and in 1769, on the recommendation of Dr. Watson, afterwards bishop of Llandaff, he obtained an assistant-mastership at Harrow under Dr. Sumner. On the appointment of Dr. Heath to the head-mastership in 1771 Drury was almost persuaded to join in the secession of Samuel Parr, who set up an opposition school at Stanmore, taking with him one of the under-masters and several boys; he decided to remain loyal to the ancient foundation, became one of Heath's most efficient assistants, and on 5 Aug. 1775 married his youngest sister, Louisa, daughter of Benjamin Heath, D.C.L. (Heathiana, p. 22). On the resignation of Dr. Heath in 1785 Drury, who was then in his thirty-sixth year, was elected to succeed him. He graduated B.D. in 1784 and D.D. in 1789. He held the head-mastership for twenty years. When Heath left, the number of boys at the school was a little over two hundred, a slight diminution took place during Drury's earlier years of office, and in 1796 the numbers were only 139. After a period of depression the school increased rapidly under his management, and in 1803 numbered 345 boys, among whom were many who afterwards became famous, and an extraordinarily large number of the nobility for the size of the school (Thornton). This increase, which marks an epoch in the life of the school, must be ascribed mainly to the character of the head-master. As a teacher Drury was eminently successful, and while he insisted on scholarship taught his boys to appreciate classical literature, and encouraged Latin and English composition both in prose and verse, and the practice of public recitation. His influence over his boys may be judged by the feelings he inspired in such a difficult pupil as Lord Byron [q. v.] Though he was a firm disciplinarian the boys considered him a kind master, they knew that he was sincerely anxious for their welfare, and they admired his dignified manners and easy address. Byron speaks most warmly of him in a note to ‘Childe Harold,’ canto iv. st. 75, and under the name of Probus in ‘Childish Recollections’ and lines ‘On a Change of Masters’ in ‘Hours of Idleness.’ He appears to have been the first head-master
