SCHOOLS Crosse Peake of Sidney-Sussex College twenty- ninth in 1839. Percival Frost of St. John's College was second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman in the same year. William Arrow- smith of Trinity College in 1833, James Atlay of St. John's College in 1837, Charles John Ellicott '^ of St. John's and Thomas Robinson of Trinity in 1838, Thomas Field of St. John's in 1841, and Edward John Selwyn of Trinity in 1843, were Bell University scholars. Sidney Lidderdale Smith of St. John's was equal to Atlay in the examination, but did not in other respects so fully satisfy the statutory require- ments. Atlay was sixth classic and a senior optime in 1840; Ellicott gained a second class in classics and was a senior optime in 184 1, and won the Members' prize for a Latin essay in 1842, and the Hulsean prize in 1843; and Field was fourth classic and a senior optime in 1844. Francis Roughton of St. John's was third wrangler in 1846, and Samuel Cheetham of Christ's eighth classic in 1850. Hildyard, Ludlam, Pratt, Stevenson, Woollcy, Peake, Frost, Atlay, Ellicott, Field, and Cheetham were elected fellows of their colleges, and Roughton of Jesus. Frost at a later date became fellow of King's. Edward Boucher James was the only old Oakhamian who achieved equivalent success at the sister university; he gained a second class in classics in 1842, and became fellow of Queen's. Atlay and Ellicott, who were almost exact contemporaries at school, were later on both raised to the episcopate, the former being appointed Bishop of Hereford in 1868, and the latter Bishop of Gloucester in 1863. Ellicott also held the; Hulsean Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge in i860 and 1 86 1. WooUey became a Canon of Norwich and Arch- deacon of Suffolk, and Cheetham Archdeacon and Canon of Rochester, and Hulsean Lecturer at Cambridge. Pratt and Frost were both well- known writers on mathematical subjects ; the former became Archdeacon of Calcutta. With Dr. Doncaster's resignation in 1846 the palmy days of Oakham came to an end. His successor, William Spicer Wood, was, from the academical point of view, even a more distinguished man. A scholar of St. John's Col- lege, Cambridge, in 1838 he was Cliancellor's English medallist, in 1839 Browne medallist, and in 1840, the year in which he took his B.A. degree, he was again Chancellor's medallist and also seventh wrangler and fourth classic. From 1840 to 1846 he was a fellow of his college. But during his mastership the summit of the school achievement was two fellowships, one at Sidney-Sussex, gained by George Hanslip Hopkins, who was fifteenth wrangler in 1853, and one at St. John's, gained by the head master's son and namesake, who was twenty-second wrangler and " Ellicott accompanied Dr. Gretton to Stamford in 1833 ; F.C.H. Lines, ii, 477, where an account is given of Gretton's work there. eleventh classic in 1871, as well as winner of various university prizes and scholarships. We must add, however, that two boys who had used Oakham as a preparatory school achieved a like success, one carrying off a fellowship at St. John's, and the other at King's. An old boy of this period, a distinguished Indian civilian, formerly Secretary of Revenue and Agriculture to the Government of India, Sir Edward Charles Buck, C.B., K.C.S.I., who took his B.A. degree in 1862, was later elected an honorary fellow of Clare College. Dr. Wood's most successful years from the point of view of university distinctions were from 1855 to 1865, when eigliteen scholarships at Cambridge, one exhibition at Cambridge and another at Oxford, two first classes in the mathematical tripos (a fifteenth and thirty-third wranglership) and two in the classical tripos, four places in the Indian Civil Service, and eight second-class honours in various triposes at Cambridge were placed to the credit of this school. In the next decade only the head master's son, a brilliant exception, managed to secure first-class honours, while eleven second-class honours seem to suggest that Oakham was now being supplied and was supplying the university with inferior material — doubtless a result of the superior attrac- tiveness of Uppingham under Edward Thring. Two scholars of this period, Charles Edward Cooper of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who gained a second class in classics in 1873, and Reginald Murray Sampson of St. John's, who gained a third class in classics in 1876, subse- quently became head masters of Hurstpierpoint and Hawkshead Schools respectively. During Dr. Wood's term of office the school- house was rebuilt. In 1853 the trustees ap- pointed a committee to consider the question of a suitable site, and it was at first proposed to re-erect the building on Cutt's Close. This proposal was, however, abandoned, and the new house was erected on the site of the old one in 1858 after the designs of Sir Sidney Smirke. The sugc^estion that Oakham was favoured by the governing body at the expense of Upping- ham, because of their jealousy of the independent growth of the latter school under Thring and his colleagues,'^ is probably not without some truth in fact, though it is true that the new buildings at Oakham were under consideration before Thring's appointment. In 1870 the freehold of the old vicarage, after 1 880 occupied as a sanatorium, was also acquired for the benefit of the school. In 1864 a new usher, the last assistant to bear that title, was appointed in Patricius Grey Skip- worth, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who gained a second class in the mathematical and a third in the classical tripos in 1858. Parkin, Life of E. Thring, i, 82, and W. L. Sar- gant, op. cit. 15. A photograph of the new school- house is to be found in the latter work, opposite p. i 5. 279
