the vocalists, engaged by the Medenham apostles, sang, with rapt expression, the following strophe : "From earth to heaven Withehead's soul is fled; His Muse, concording with resounding strings, When such things were sung of a Medenham apostle, in presence of an unprotesting clergy, we need not wonder that there were a few serious men, with a certain John Wesley at the head of them, anxiously seeking for a "method" to remedy the enormous evils of the times. We perhaps have deferred too long to notice the establishment of which such men as Stow and Speed were members, and which has furnished many a scholar or gallant gentleman to illustrate arts or arms. Let us then say a word of honoured "Merchant Tailors!" MEMS. OF "MERCHANT TAILORS." "My heart is yours, And you shall see it spring, and shoot forth leaves Ascend to ev'ry part, to make it green And pay your love with fruit, when harvest comes." LOVE TRICKS, by Shirley, a pupil of M. T. I REGRET to say it, but the Rev. H. B. Wilson, the reverend author of that half-hundredweight quarto which gives the history of the Merchant Tailors, and which the author hoped would find its way into our villages, is ashamed of the origin of his heroes. He has even enough of false pride to beg that writers will spell Merchant Taylors with a y, and not with an i! Tailors with an i, he says, may be mistaken for a trade; while Taylors with a y may be taken for a name! So was Sir Piercie Shafton ever blushing at the idea of his father's calling; and so do the Smiths with an i, fancy that they glide into gentility and euphony by becoming Smyths with a y. How long the City guild of tailors has sustained a corporate dignity it would be hard to say; we know however that Edward I. confirmed the guild under their old name of "Merchant Tailors and Linen Armourers." Their symbolic shield bore a tent between two mantles, denoting that the honest men of the guild made cloaks for all customers, and tents for the royal army. Many a marquis has not half so delicate a device; and the Mercatores Scissores have been worthily translated by those far less useful gentlemen, the members of the College of Arms. The oath of the livery bound the new brother to the utmost possible respect ability of life; but the oath was not broken when the taker of it, in a fit of enthusiastic pride, broke the head of a "Merchant Skinner" who dared claim precedency over the "Tailor." A "bloody coxcomb" was too often the crest of the valiant Mercatores Scissores. Of the members of the company, in the olden time, the most illustrious was Hawkwood, to whom I have assigned a chapter, as becoming his super-sartorial dignity. Here I will only briefly speak of the school, and the more illustrious men whom it has furnished to the public service. The latter are bound to drink the immortal memory of the royal founder of the "Merchant Tailors and Linen Armourers." The school was established by the company in 1560-1, "for children of all nations and countries indifferently;" a liberal provision, which was contracted in 1731 by an order of court, whereby express exclusion was made of the children of Jews. Among the statutes, there is especial injunction that, "in the schoole, at noe time of the yere, they shall use tallow candle in noe wise, but wax candles only;" an injunction which shows less regard for grammar than gentility. The school rather tripped at the beginning; for though Mulcaster, the head master, was an accomplished scholar, the ushers brought with them from the north such a Boeotian accent, that the boys went home talking "broad Yorkshire !" Mulcaster, the master, too could occasionally indulge in very harsh English of the vulgar tongue, abusing the "visitors" roundly, -a rudeness that ought not to have been seen at a school lit only with wax candles, and having six or seven and thirty scholarships at St. John's. Mulcaster was a choleric man; but in his mastership of a quarter of a century he "turned out" four bishops. These, when boys, had been the widest awake, while the master slept; for, as Fuller tells us, "he slept his hour (custom made him critical to proportion it) in his desk in the school, but woe be to the scholar that slept the while. Awaking, he heard them accurately; and Atropos might be persuaded to pity, as soon as he to pardon. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending children." In our days, Dr. Hessey can make good scholars by a more merciful and dignified process. Wilkinson, the successor of Mulcaster, had the famous Whitelock for a pupil; and under the third master, Smith, we find at the school a boy named Juxon, who afterwards stood on the scaffold with Charles I., and smoothed the sovereign's path from time into eternity. Boyle and Dee were also at this time young "Merchant Tailors," whose subsequent manly merits reflected lustre on the old foundation. Smith's successor, Haynes, was, like Mulcaster, rather ready with his tongue and heavy with his hand. He chastised unmercifully; and, on being menaced with complaint to the wardens, he was so audacious as to declare that he did not care a "phillip" for them. His ushers, too, appear to have been rough of speech; and "Bridewell rogue" was the tutorial epithet for a rebellious pupil. Haynes too was accused of encouraging little lotteries for his own profit, and not for the recreation of the pupils. "For," says the complaint, "you suffer none to drawe any one lott, but those that bring xiid. or above. Your biggest lot is one grammer of xd. which is the greate lott; the rest are inkhornes, hobby-horses, gingerbread, paints, and puddings of very small value." The master of Merchant Tailors' is indignant thereat, and protests that not only is the matter one of pure entertainment, but that he makes nothing by it, and that he finds the drawers in "dyett bread, comfitts of all sorts, ffiggs, raysonnes, allmonds, stewed prunes, wiggs, beare, and some wine, and all kinds of ffrute, which the season of the yeare affordes." A story is told of one of Haynes's pupils, which, like many other stories, has had different individuals for its hero. It is to this effect. A very proud and an intolerably ignorant gentleman was constantly boasting that he enjoyed the advantage of having been 14 a member of both Universities. "You remind me," said the old Merchant Tailors' pupil, of a circumstance worth narrating. I have two cows at home which calved at the same time. One calf died, but I let the other calf suck both the cows." "Well," said the member of two Universities, "what was the consequence?" "A prodigiously great calf indeed, Sir." For many years the scholastic portion of Merchant Tailors' appears to have suffered by repeated visitations of the Plague. Then came the Great Rebellion, with a modifying of the rules, which were made excessively stringent, and under which the pupils were converted to as sour a series of classes as if they were enrolled in Dotheboys Hall. But then came the Restoration, and therewith relaxation; and the young "tailors" pushed up their beavers from off their eyes, turned up their lank hair into seductive curls, put their hands on their hips, and looked saucily at the maids of Cheapside. In the midst of it all burst forth the Great Fire; and the "tailors," for a time houseless, got their lessons by fits and starts, till they were once more tabernacled, in high spirits, within a comfortable dwelling. One would have thought that all would have been harmony in the new house; but such was not the case. For some time, indeed, nobody could discover a grievance; but having looked everywhere to find one, and all in vain, recourse was had to religion, and of course a few were created instanter. Good, the master, continued to pray as heretofore in Latin. The boys roared out for plain English precations. The City took various sides of the question,for, against, and a little of both languages. The Latinists at last prevailed, and the orthodox declared that the heel of the Apocalyptic Beast was on the brow of the scholars, and that the sun of England had set for ever. It is a sun however that hitherto has exhibited great a alacrity in rising again. Of course the zealous party ousted Good in time. The members of it held that daily prayers and much devotion after a ceremonious manner savoured of Popery, and poor Good was |