324
NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. vm. OCT. 26, 1907.
improved grammars of the master, John
Stanbridge, and of the usher, Robert Whit
tington ; and it is to these men that we owe
the beginnings of that reformed teaching o:
grammar which Dean John Colet and William
Lily, both of Magdalen, introduced into the
more famous school of St. Paul's, London
Shakespeare, as we know, had carefully
studied his Lily's grammar, the ' Sententiae
Pueriles,' and kindred school-books of the
period. His Holofernes is steeped in such
lore ; but his Pinch is a pedagogue of an
inferior breed a quack conjuring doctor
The Stratford School was probably helc
during the poet's boyhood in the Gild Chapel
now the School Chapel hard by Shake-
speare's later home at New Place. The
old schoolrooms were then out of repair ,
and Malvolio is likened to " a pedant thai
keeps school i' the church." But the most
charming encounter with a pedagogue in
Shakespeare is the scene between " Sir "
Hugh Evans and little William Page
perhaps a reminiscence from the boyhood
of a greater William when, he, too, was a
Whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.
The frequent applications of the birch in those heroic days must have accounted for a great deal of "whining," and have overclouded, it is to be feared, a number of " shining morning faces." I have always thought that little William Page in ' The Merry Wives ' behaved with great forbear- ance and politeness, as he was forced to exhibit specimens of his "good sprag memory " upon a holiday. Roche, appa- rently, continued to live at Stratford after he had ceased to be master of the school ; for in 1582 he moved into a house in Chapel Street, and replaced the tiles with old- fashioned thatch (Sidney Lee's ' Stratford- on-Avon,' 1904, p. 131). Simon Hunt, his tsuccessor, is probably the man who took his B.A. degree at Oxford on 5 April, 1568 ; and the next master, the Thomas Jenkins (Jenkeins or Jenkens), scholar of St. John's College, Oxon, who took his B.A. degree on 6 April, 1566 ; his M.A. on 8 April, 1570.
The master of 1583, Alexander Aspinall or Aspinwall, is probably identical with the Brasenose undergraduate from Lancashire who took his B.A. degree on 25 Feb., 1575 ; Ms M.A. on 12 June, 1578. Some have thought that the Rosalind beloved by Edmund Spenser was a lady of the Aspinall family. A later master, John Trapp, was a man of some importance in his day. In 1622, at the age of nineteen, he was made
usher of the Free School by the Stratford
Corporation ; and succeeded to the master-
ship on 2 April, 1624, taking his M.A. degree
from Christ Church, Oxon, in the same year.
In 1636 he was presented to the vicarage
of Weston-on-Avon, two miles distant from
his school. Upon the outbreak of the great
Civil War, Trapp sided with Parliament,
took the Covenant of 1643, and suffered
much from the tender mercies of the King's
soldiers at Weston. He acted as chaplain
to the Puritans in the Stratford garrison
for two years. In 1646 the Westminster
Assembly of Divines gave him the rectory
of Welford, which he retained until the
Restoration, when he returned to Weston,
and there died in 1669. During his residence
at Welford (1646-60) he had appointed Ms
son-in-law, Robert Dale, to be his deputy
in the school at Stratford. Trapp was not
only " one of the prime preachers of his
time," but also an assiduous commentator
on the Bible ; and Mr. J. Stanley Culver-
well, the present Captain of the School,
tells me that ' Trapp on the New Testament '
is one of the most interesting and valuable
of the old volumes preserved in the School
Library the fine old chamber formerly
the Council Room. Trapp's son John was
vicar of Stratford 1682-4 ; and a grandson,
Joseph, was in 1708 the first Professor of
Poetry at Oxford (see ' D.N.B.,' Ivii. 155).
It was this Dr. Joseph Trapp who wrote the
celebrated epigram :
The King, observing with judicious eyes
The wants of his two Universities,
To Oxford sent a troop of horse ; and why?
That learned body wanted loyalty.
To Cambridge books he sent, as well discerning
How much that loyal body wanted learning.
Josiah Simcox was master 1669-81. A native of West Bromwich, co. Stafford, he matriculated at New Inn Hall, Oxon, on 21 Feb., 1662, aged seventeen ; took his B.A. degree in 1665 ; was elected master on 12 Nov., 1669 ; appointed vicar of Strat- ford 25 Nov., 1681 ; and died 27 December of the same year. His successor as Master, John Johnson, was probably the son of Matthew of Weston, who matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxon, on 3 Nov., 1665, aged eighteen. He was succeeded (1688- 1722) by Thomas Willes, son, apparently, of Thomas of Kingston, Surrey, D.D., who matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxon, on 1 July, 1676, aged fourteen ; took his B.A. degree in 1680 ; his M.A. from Clare Hall (now College), Cambridge, in 1683 ; and was vicar of Weston-on-Avon in 1689. lis successor Gabriel Barrodale (1722-35)
