vii. Eton College

Head Masters:—William Malim (c. 1555–73); William Smyth (c. 1563); Reuben Sherwood (c. 1571); Thomas Ridley (1579); John Hammond (1583); Richard Langley (1594); Richard Wright (1611); Matthew Bust (1611–30).

[Bibliographical Note.—The best sources of information are J. Heywood and T. Wright, Ancient Laws of King’s College and Eton College (1850); Report of Public Schools Commission (1864); W. L. Collins, Etoniana 1865); H. Maxwell-Lyte, History of Eton (1875, 4th ed. 1911); W. Sterry, Annals of Eton College (1898).]

The King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor was founded by Henry VI in 1441. The Statutes of 1444 provide for a Boy Bishop (Mediaeval Stage, i. 365), but the custom was discontinued before 1559–61, when William Malim prepared a Consuetudinarium for a Royal Commission appointed to visit the college. By this time, however, Christmas plays by the boys had become the practice, and Malim writes:

‘Circiter festum D. Andreae [Nov. 30] ludimagister eligere solet pro suo arbitrio scaenicas fabulas optimas et quam accommodatissimas, quas pueri feriis natalitiis subsequentibus non sine ludorum elegantia, populo spectante, publice aliquando peragant. Histrionum levis ars est, ad actionem tamen oratorum, et gestum motumque corporis decentem tantopere facit, ut nihil magis. Interdum etiam exhibet Anglico sermone contextas fabulas, quae habeant acumen et leporem.’

There are ‘numerous’ entries of expenditure on these plays in the Audit Books from 1525–6 to 1572–3, of which a few only have been printed. There is also an inventory, apparently undated, of articles in ‘Mr. Scholemasters chamber’, which includes ‘a great cheste bound about with yron to keepe the players coats in’, and a list of the apparel, beards, and properties. The Eton boys played under Udall before Cromwell in 1538 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 196, 451), and it is possible that Ralph Roister Doister may belong to his Eton mastership. The only Court performance by Eton boys on record was one on 6 January 1573, for which the payee was Elderton, presumably the William Elderton who was payee for the Westminster boys in the following year.