The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VII. Cavalier and Puritan.
§ 16. Oakham and Uppingham
In Rutland, for example, the statutes and ordinances given by Robert Johnson (archdeacon of Leicester, 1599–1625), for the free grammar schools which he founded at Oakham and Uppingham, and drawn up in the first year of the reign of Charles I, were strictly on the traditional lines—the twentyfour governors being required to be chiefly “parsons,” including the bishop, dean and archdeacon of the diocese, a “knight, esquire, or gentleman” being only occasionally admissible; the master was to be a “master of arts, and diligent in his place, painful in the educating of children in good learning and religion, such as can make a Greek and Latin verse,”—the usher “a godly, learned, and discreet man, one that can make true Latin, both in prose and verse,” and bound “not to disgrace the Schoolmaster or animate the scholars in undutifulness towards him.” Such were the conditions prescribed even by one who was the close friend of Laurence Chaderton, master of Emmanuel college, Cambridge (under whom that society assumed its especially puritan character), and who sent his son, Abraham Johnson, to be educated there, with the express sanction of the founder, Sir Walter Mildmay. In fact, the influence of the local clergy, in the earlier part of the century, made it difficult for a founder, desirous of introducing any innovations with respect either to subjects taught or methods of instruction, to open a school, that claimed to be preparatory to the universities, with reasonable prospect of success.