leving the possession of all thynges shall hereafter give room and place."" When we remember that Hall was an Etonian, and zealous for the glory of Eton, as many passages in his works demonstrate, we can hardly believe that he would have omitted to chronicle a circumstance so honourable to Eton, as that it had ever ranked among its students the sagacious founder of the dynasty of the Tudors.

The College buildings were continued during Henry the Seventh's reign, and also during the early years of the reign of Henry the Eighth. The accounts of this last period are also preserved. They show a small increase in the rate of wages over the sums paid sixty years before.

CHAPTER II.

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Croke the Scholar.-Bishop Aldrich.-Hall the Historian.-Bishop Foxe.-Bishop Cox.Sir Thomas Sutton.-Walter Haddon.-Sir Thomas Smith.-Sir Henry Savile.— Admiral Gilbert.-Oughtred.-Tusser.-Phineas and Giles Fletcher.-The Martyrs.Henry the Eighth's Survey.-Old Consuetudinarium.-State of School in 1660.

RICHARD CROKE.

RICHARD CROKE, once renowned through the Continent by his Latinised name "Crocus," was one of the earliest and most eminent revivers of classical studies in Western Europe. Croke received his education at Eton during the last years of the fourteenth and the five first years of the fifteenth century. He became a scholar at King's College, Cambridge, in 1506. Croke acquired not merely an English but an European celebrity as a Hellenist, and was indeed one of the first, if not the very first, who taught the Greek language publicly in any university north of the Alps.

While still a scholar of King's, Croke visited Oxford, and there studied the Greek language under the famous Grocyn, the friend of Erasmus. Grocyn gave private lessons in Greek, and Croke, during the time that he was able to pass at Oxford, was one of his most diligent and successful pupils. Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, who discerned Croke's abilities and love of learning, was a generous friend to the young student; and by Warham's liberality Croke was enabled to proceed to Paris and other universities of Europe, in all of which he zealously availed himself of every opportunity of further improvement. His reputation for scholarship spread far and wide on the Continent. He received the high distinction of being elected Greek professor by the University of Leipsic. This appointment was more complimentary than lucrative, as Croke's stipend was only a few guilders a year, but he was entitled to receive payment for extra tuition from private pupils. At Leipsic, Croke "had the high honour of first

imbuing the students of North Germany with a knowledge of Greek."

After thus shining at Leipsic for three years, Croke became professor of Greek at Louvain. But the zeal for acquiring a knowledge of the Hellenic literature in the original began now to be generally felt in our own universities. England was no longer disposed to afford foreigners a teacher of Croke's ability. He was invited home by the University of Cambridge in 1519, and appointed Public Orator and Greek Professor. Here, as at Leipsic, he was the first public teacher of that language. Erasmus and other learned Greek scholars, who had resided at Cambridge before Croke's appointment, had indeed taught Greek, but they taught it only to private pupils, as Grocyn had formerly taught Croke himself at Oxford. Two speeches have been preserved, which Croke delivered at Cambridge in his capacity of Public Orator. Their subject is the praise of Hellenic literature, and they were evidently given with a view to encourage the Cambridge men to the study of Greek. Mr. Hallam, in his History of the Literature of Europe during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, has given copious extracts from these orations of Croke's, which well deserve perusal.'

1 See Hallam's History of European Literature, vol. i. chap. iv. Mr. Hallam, in one of his notes, thus collects the testimony of Croke's renown on the Continent :-" Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, publicitus Græcas docens literas. Erasm. Epist. clvii. 5th June 1514. Eichhorn says, that Conrad Celtes and others had taught Latin only, iii. 272. Camerarius, who studied for three years under Croke, gives him a very high character; qui primus putabatur ita docuisse Græcam linguam in Germania, ut plane perdisci illam posse, et quid momenti ad omnem doctrinæ eruditionem atque cultum hujus cognitio allatura esse videretur, nostri homines sese intelligere arbitrarentur. Vita Melanchthonis, p. 27; and Vita Eobani Hesi, p. 4. He was received at Leipsic 'like a heavenly messenger:' every one was proud of knowing him, of paying whatever he demanded, of attending him at any hour of the day or night. Melanchthon apud Meiners, i. 163."

2 “The subject of Croke's orations is the praise of Greece and of Greek literature, addressed to those who already knew and valued that of Rome, which he shows to be derived from the other. Quin ipse quoque voculationes Romanæ Græcis longe insuaviores, minusque concitatæ sunt, cum ultima semper syllaba rigeat in gravem, contraque apud Græcos et inflectatur nonnunquam et acuatur. Croke of course spoke Greek accentually. Greek words, in bad types, frequently occur through this oration. "Croke dwells on the barbarous state of the sciences, in consequence of the ignorance of Greek. Euclid's definition of a line was so ill translated, that it puzzled all the geometers till the Greek was consulted. Medicine was in an equally bad condition; had it not been for the labours of learned men, Linacre, Cop, Ruel, quorum opera felicissime loquantur Latinè Hippocrates, Galenus et Dioscorides, cum summa ipsorum invidia, qui, quod canis in præsepi, nec Græcam linguam discere ipsi voluerunt, nec

In 1524 Croke took his degree of Doctor of Divinity, and in that year Henry the Eighth, who had heard honourable mention of him, engaged him as tutor to the young Duke of Richmond. Being thus brought under Henry's immediate notice, Croke rose rapidly in royal favour, and was soon employed by the king in matters of the highest responsibility and importance. The

aliis ut discerent permiserunt. He then urges the necessity of Greek studies for the theologian, and seems to have no respect for the Vulgate above the original.

"Turpe sanè erit, cum mercator sermonem Gallicum, Illyricum, Hispanicum, Germanicum, vel solius lucri causa avide ediscat, vos studiosos Græcum in manus vobis traditum rejicere, quo et divitiæ et eloquentia et sapientia comparari possunt. Imo perpendite rogo viri Cantabrigienses, quo nunc in loco vestra res sitæ sunt. Oxonienses quos ante hæc in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad literas Græcas perfugere, vigilant, jejunant, sudant et algent; nihil non faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si contingat, actum est de fama vestra. Erigent enim de vobis tropæum nunquam succumbuturi. Habent duces præter cardinalem Cantuariensem, Wintoniensem, cæteros omnes Angliæ episcopos, excepto uno Roffensi, summo semper fautore vestro, et Eliensi, etc.

"Favet præterea ipsis sancta Grocini et theologo digna severitas, Linacri #oλvμabela et acre judicium, Tunstali non legibus magis quam utrique linguæ familiaris facundia, Stopleii triplex lingua, Mori candida et eloquentissima urbanitas, Pacei mores doctrina et ingenium, ab ipso Erasmo, optimo eruditionis censore, commendati; quem vos olim habuistis Græcarum literarum professorem, utinamque potuissetis retinere. Succedo in Erasmi locum ego, bone Deus, quam infra illum, et doctrinâ et famâ, quanquam me, ne omnino nihili fiam, principes viri, theologici doctores, jurium etiam et medicinæ, artium præterea professores innumeri, et præceptorem agnovere, et quod plus est, a scholis ad ædes, ab ædibus ad scholas honorificentissime comitati perduxere. Dii me perdant, viri Cantabrigienses, si ipsi Oxonienses stipendio multorum nobilium præter victum me non invitavere. Sed ego pro mea in hanc academiam et fide et observantia, etc.

"In his second oration, Croke exhorts the Cantabrigians not to give up the study of Greek. Si quisquam omnium sit qui vestræ reipublicæ bene consulere debeat, is ego sum, viri Cantabrigienses. Optime enim vobis esse cupio, et id nisi facerem, essem profecto longe ingratissimus. Ubi enim jacta literarum mearum fundamenta, quibus tantum tum apud nostrates, tum vero apud exteros quoque principes, favoris mihi comparatum est; quibus ea fortuna, ut licet jam olim consanguineorum iniquitate paterna hæreditate sim spoliatus, ita tamen adhuc vivam, ut quibusvis meorum majorum imaginibus videar non indignus. He was probably of the ancient family of Croke. Peter Mosellanus calls him, in a letter among those of Erasmus, juvenis cum imaginibus.

"Audio ego plerosque vos a literis Græcis dehortatos esse. Sed vos diligenter expendite, qui sint, et plane non alios fore comperitis, quam qui igitur linguam oderunt Græcam, quia Romanam non norunt. Cæterum jam deprehendo quid facturi sint, qui nostras literas odio prosequuntur, confugiunt videlicet ad religionem, cui uni dicent omnia postponenda. Sentio ego cum illis, sed unde quæso orta religio, nisi è Græcia ? quid enim novum testamentum, excepto Matthæo? quid enim vetus? nunquid Deo auspice a Septuaginta Græce reditum? Oxonia est colonia vestra; uti olim non sine summa laude a Cantabrigia deducta, ita non sine summo vestro nunc dedecore, si doctrina ab ipsis vos vinci patiamini. Fuerunt olim illi discipuli vestri, nunc erunt præceptores? Utinam quo animo hæc a me dicta sunt, eo vos dicta interpretemini ; crederetisque, quod est verissimum, si quoslibet alios, certe Cantabrigienses minime decere literarum Græcarum esse desertores."-Hallam.

question about the king's divorce from Queen Catherine was then in agitation, and Croke's ability, and also his reputation abroad, induced Henry to send him to the Italian universities to obtain opinions from them in favour of the divorce.

On Croke's return to England he received an earnest invitation from the University of Oxford to settle there as teacher of Greek. Croke went accordingly to Oxford in 1532, and that University was the fourth that was indebted to him for first diffusing generally among its students a knowledge of the Greek language. Croke was made by King Henry one of the twelve canons on Cardinal Wolsey's foundation at Oxford, and afterwards removed to Exeter College in that university. He died in London in 1558. Some of Croke's works were reprinted and published at Leipsic during the last century, with an introduction by Boemius, in which honourable mention is made of their author as the reviver of Greek literature. Croke's letter from Italy to Henry the Eighth on the subject of the divorce may be seen in Burnet's History of the Reformation, where there is also a full account of Croke's mission. (Chalmers' Biog. Dict.-Hallam's Hist. of Literature.)

ROBERT ALDRICH.

ROBERT ALDRICH, born at Burnham in Buckinghamshire, was an Eton boy during the first years of this century, and became a scholar of King's in 1507. He returned to Eton as Headmaster in 1515, and held that office till 1520. In 1531 he was made Archdeacon of Colchester; in 1534 Canon of Windsor and Registrar of the Garter. In 1535 he succeeded Dr. Lupton as Provost of Eton, and presided over our College till 1547, when he resigned the provostship. Two years after he was made Provost, he had been made Bishop of Carlisle; he died at Horncastle, in Lincolnshire, on the 5th of March, 1555.

Aldrich, like Croke, was a zealous promoter of the revival of classical learning in England; and, like Croke, he was in his youth a personal friend of Erasmus. While that learned foreigner was at Cambridge, Aldrich was his constant assistant in the task of collating manuscripts, and in abridging the contents of many of the old literary treasures which they discovered. In after life he was Erasmus's correspondent, who seems to have retained a high