Extracts from the Journal of Walter Gale, Schoolmaster at Mayfield, 1750.
Edited by R. W. Blencowe, Esq.
In two former volumes of our Archaeological work we were enabled to publish extracts from the journals of a country gentleman and a country clergyman, who lived in Sussex about the middle and latter part of the seventeenth century. These genuine records give us considerable insight into the social and moral character of the different classes to which they belonged. We are now enabled, through the kindness of Mr. Ross, the mayor of Hastings, to present to the public another record of the same nature, but of a later date by nearly a century, in the shape of the Diary of a Schoolmaster in a country parish, which carries our sphere of observation among a different and much more extensive class, and completes, as it were, the picture of Sussex manners and habits in the days that are past.
This diary was found by Mr. Ross, spread out in a garden at Hastings to be dried for the purpose of lighting fires. By him the papers were rescued from the flames, and kindly communicated to the Society.
On Friday, the 29th of June, 1750, there were assembled in parochial conclave, in the church of Mayfield, the vicar and six more of the principal inhabitants of the parish, the trustees and managers of a free-school recently founded and endowed there, and then and there did they proceed to appoint Walter Gale the schoolmaster, his qualifications being, as is recorded in one of the parish books, that he was a member of the Church of England, of known affection to the present establishment in church and state, understanding the grounds and principles of the Christian religion, of sober life and conversation, of a meek and humble behaviour, having a good government over himself and his
