large fortune, came back in the disguise of a pauper, first to his native place, Newland, in Gloucestershire, from whence, having been ill received there, he betook himself to Monmouth, and meeting with kindness among his old friends, he bestowed £9000 in founding a free grammar-school.[1]
The salary of the Mayfield schoolmaster was only £16 a year, which was subsequently increased by the bequest of a house and garden, which let for £l8 a year. There were none of those perquisites, so common in old grammar schools, by which the scanty fortunes of the masters were increased, and the boys instructed in the humanities, as in the Middle School at Manchester, where the master provided the cocks for which he was liberally paid, and which were to be buried up to their necks to be shied at by the boys on Shrove Tuesday and at the feast of St. Nicholas, as at Wyke, near Ashford. No Mr. Graham had bequeathed a silver bell to Mayfield, as he had done to the school at Wreay, in 1661, to be fought for annually, when two of the boys, who had been chosen as captains, and who were followed by their partisans, distinguished by blue and red ribbons, marched in procession to the village green, where each produced his cocks; and when the fight was won, the bell was appended to the hat of the victor, to be transmitted from one successful captain to another.[2] There were no potation pence, when there were deep drinkings, sometimes for the benefit of the clerk of the parish, when it was called clerk's ale, and more often for the schoolmaster, and in the words of some old statutes, for "the solace of the neighbourhood:" potations which Agnes Mellers, a vowess, the widow of a wealthy bellfounder of Nottingham, endeavoured, in some degree, to restrain, when she founded the grammar-school in that town in 1513, by declaring, that the schoolmaster and usher of her school should not make or
- ↑ See Carlyle's Concise Description of the English Endowed Grammar Schools, from whose book all the cases alluded to are taken.
- ↑ Cock-fighting was, in fact, the great national amusement, particularly in the north of England, and Berwick-upon-Tweed was among the places most celebrated for it. The grandfather of a friend of the editor's, some ninety years ago, was travelling in the north of England, when a cock-fighting was about to take place. The parties were in want of an adept in putting on the spurs: he was recognised by an acquaintance, who exclaimed "Here comes a Berwick man; he knows how to do it."—Cock-fighting is now legally a misdemeanour; and on the 15th of April, at the Liverpool Police Court, James Clark, a publican in Houghton Street, was fined £5 and costs for permitting cock-fighting in his house.—Times, April 20, 1857.
