GOWN-BOY AT CHARTERHOUSE

A MEMORANDUM in Wesley’s own writing shows that on January 28th, 1714, he was nominated by the Duke of Buckingham on the foundation of Charterhouse. His Grace,. who was at that time Lord Chamberlain, had long been a friend of the Wesleys. Within a week of their disastrous fire the Rector sent an account to him, with a description of his boy’s deliverance. The Duke and Duchess had given 26 17s. 6d. to help Samuel Wesley during his financial troubles in 1703, so that they were old friends. This nomination introduced John Wesley to that famous school for which he cherished a life-long affection. It celebrated its centenary in the year he came up from Epworth. Its founder—Thomas Sutton, the merchant prince—who died at Hackney on December 12th, 1611 at the ripe age of seventy-nine, had resolved to devote his vast wealth to some worthy charity, and after long and anxious thought, determined to found a hospital or home for the poor or aged and also a free schooL At first he intended to erect the buildings at Little Hallingbury, in Essex, but he afterwards bought Howard House for 13,ooo. This mansion, the home of the dukes of Norfolk, had formerly been a Carthusian monastery, in which both Sir Thomas More and Dean Colet “found a temporary retreat from the cares of the world.” The house Was founded in 1372, and perished at the dissolution of the monasteries in Henry VIII.’s reign. Its prior suffered on the scaffold rather than betray his trust.

The property passed into the hands of the Howards in 1 565. The Duke of Norfolk, who was beheaded because of his correspondence with Mary, Queen of Scots, was living here at the time he was committed to the Tower. He was released after an imprisonment of some months, and returned to his mansion, under the surveillance of Sir Henry Nevil. He spent much time in beautifying his house, but in 1571 he was again in the Tower. John Wesley’s warm sympathy with the unfortunate Queen may have been first stirred by the associations of his school The property, confiscated for a time by Elizabeth, was afterwards restored to the Howards. In 1603 James I. made this mansion of the family, that had suffered so much for his mother, his first home when he reached London. He kept court there for four days, and knighted more than eighty gentlemen. Such were the historic associations of the Charterhouse. Seven full-length portraits which were entrusted to the care of one of the officers of the hospital by the Duchess of Monmouth, who intended to claim them when happier days dawned, still remain on the walls where they hung in John Wesley’s time. The monastery, which was on the system of La Grande Chartreuse, bequeathed its name to the famous foundation of Sutton. Charter-house is simply a corruption of Chartreuse. In its “Governors’ Room,” where the managers of the charity used to meet, almost all the illustrious men of England from the time of Henry VIII. to the Restoration have been familiar figures.

The school was opened on October 3rd, 1614, with forty boys on the foundation, who were educated free of charge, and wore gowns of broad cloth lined with baize. Hence they were called gown-boys. A schoolmaster and an usher had charge of their education. About sixty “town-boys” who were not on the foundation were admitted on payment of school fees. The number of these scholars steadily grew. In 1677 there were forty-four boys on the foundation, but forty was the usual number.

During all the time John Wesley was at the Charterhouse Dr. Thomas Walker was the schoolmaster. He had been appointed in 1679, after four years spent as usher, and held the post till 1728. Andrew Tooke, who succeeded him as schoolmaster, was usher during John Wesley’s school-days. Both had been gown-boys. Dr. Walker was sixty-seven years old when John Wesley entered Charterhouse. For forty years he had devoted himself to the school. The inscription on a memorial tablet in the chapel speaks of his exceedingly accurate knowledge of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and of his diligence in the discharge of his office. Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Law, Bishop of Carlisle, Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, and Dr. Davies, the President of Queen’s College, Cambridge, who was reputed to be the best Latin scholar of his day in England, were all educated under him. He died on June 12th, 1728, in the eighty-first year of his age. Wesley’s quietneis, regularity, and application are said to have made him a special favourite with Dr. Walker.’

Andrew Tooke, the usher, was Gresham Professor of Geometry, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and an author of some eminence. His “Pantheon,” a school summary of heathen mythology, went through at least twenty-two editions. He was forty-one when John Wesley entered, and had been usher for nineteen years. He died at the age of fifty-eight, having held the headmastership for three years.

Any picture of Wesley’s school would be incomplete without some reference to the hospital and its pensioners. No Thackeray had yet arisen to immortalise those eighty decayed gentlemen for whom Thomas Sutton’s bounty provided an asylum in their declining years. But the very fact that the school and the hospital were parts of one great institution must always have been impressive. The Master of Charterhouse was both the head of the hospital and a governor of the school. He must be carefully distinguished from the schoolmaster. For one year after Wesley became a scholar this high office was held by Thomas Burnet, whose writings enjoyed a great reputation among all the scholars of Europe. Addison wrote a Latin ode in praise of his “Telluris Theoria Sacra,” a learned work on terrestrial revolutions. He had successfully resisted James II.’s attempt to intrude a Roman Catholic on the foundation, not quailing even before the brutal Jeffreys. Archbishop Tillotson’s recommendation won him t position of secretary and chaplain to William III. He w an intimate friend of Godfrey Kneller’s. He died in 1715, at the age of eighty. Dr. King, who had been Preacher of Charterhouse for twenty years, was Burnet’s successor. On January 20th, 1726, Dr. Byrom says that he went with Dr. King and two other friends to the Horn Tavern, where they had a pleasant time together. He says that Dr. Kini always carried in his pocket a copy of the “Imitation of Christ.”

The system of fagging seems to have been in full force., during Wesley’s schooldays. His life there was one of much privation. The elder boys * took the animal food from the juniors,* so that he says, “From ten to fourteen I bad little but bread to eat, and not great plenty of that. I believe this was so far from hurting me, that it laid the foundation of lasting health.” Isaac Taylor says, “Wesley learned, as a boy, to suffer wrongfully with a cheerful patience, and to conform himself to cruel despotisms without acquiring either the slave’s temper or the despot’s.” One thing helped much to preserve his strength. His father had given him strict injunctions to run round the garden, which was of considerable extent, three times every morning. Wesley was careful to obey that injunction.

One pleasant instance of the influence he exerted at school has been preserved. Mr. Took; the usher, one day missed all the little boys from the playground. He found, when he began to search, that they were all in the schoolroom around Wesley, who was relating to them instructive stories, which proved more attractive than the playground. Mr. Tooke expressed his pleasure, and wished the boy to repeat this entertainment as often as he could find listeners. A malicious construction has been given to this story. John Wesley is said to have harangued his school-fellows from the writing desks, and when taken to task by Mr. Tooke for associating with such little boys, to have answered, “Better rule in hell than serve in heaven.” Fortunately Charles Wesley’s daughter, who had received the true account from her father, was able to Confute these statements.

About the time that Wesley entered Charterhouse, his brother Samuel returned from Oxford to his old school al Westminster as usher. He seems to have married in 1715, and lived close to Dean’s Yard. Charles, their youngest brother, came up to Westminster School in 1716, so that the three Wesleys were all in London together for four years, until John went to Oxford in 1720. We catch a glimpse of one pleasant meeting, and see how much Wesley’s progress gratified his scholarly brother Samuel. In 1719, when the Rector was in doubt as to the future of Charles, Samuel wrote, “My brother Jack, I can faithfully assure you, gives you no manner of discouragement from breeding your third son a scholar.” Two or three months later he tells his father, “Jack is with me, and a brave boy, learning Hebrew as fast as he can.”

Wesley was elected to Christ Church, which he entered on June 24th, 1720.1 In 1630 there were twenty-seven exhibitioners at the universities from the foundation of Charterhouse, at a cost of four hundred and thirty-two pounds to the house. The number seems to have varied from twenty-four to twenty-nine. The school thus secured for Wesley the best education he could receive in England. He cherished a life-long feeling of affection for the place, and took a walk through it every year when in London. One of these visits forms a singularly interesting link to the thoughts and feelings of the schoolboy. On Monday, August 8th, 1757, he says, “I took a walk in the Charter-house. I wondered that all the squares and buildings, and especially the schoolboys, looked so little. But this is easily accounted for. I was little myself when I was at school, and measured all about me by myself. Accordingly, the upper boys, being then bigger than myself, seemed to me very big and tall, quite contrary to what they appear now, when I am taller and bigger than them.” *

Charterhouse was not a fashionable school like Westminster, so that we do not find many aristocratic names among Wesley’s schoolfellows. Charles Wesley’s journals refer to not a few of his contemporaries at Westminster, men of title and position. His brother mentions one of his schoolfellows who lived half a mile from Barnard Castle. When he visited that place in May, 1764, this Mr. Fielding invited him to breakfast. “I found we had been schoolfellows at the Charterhouse; and he remembered me, though I had forgot him. I spent a very agreeable hour with a serious as well as sensible man.” Four years later he lodged at this gentleman’s “lovely house” during his stay in Barnard Castle. Twenty years after his first visit he came again to the neighbourhood, and found that both Mr. Fielding and his wife were dead. His had let the house to a stranger.

On June 13th, 1748, the journals record a visit which Seems to show that Wesley was at the Charterhouse. “I Spent an hour or two with Dr. Pepusch.” On April 29th of the same year Charles Wesley writes, “Mrs. Rich carried me to Dr. Pepusch, whose music entertained us much, and his conversation more.” Mrs. Rich, who had been converted under Charles Wesley’s ministry, was the wife of the proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre, and had free access to all the best musicians of the time. Pepusch had been organist at the Charterhouse for eleven years, and lived there after his appointment. Wesley was evidently as much interested as his brother by the conversation of the aged musician. He makes a careful notes of it in his journal. Dr. Pepusch asserted that the art of music was dead. He maintained that it depended on nature and mathematical principles, which only the ancients understood in their perfection. Tallis and Purcell had made efforts to revive it, but the present masters had no fixed principles at all. Such was the conversation which seems to have taken place within the precincts of the Charterhouse.

One incident of Wesley’s schooldays shows that he was a high-spirited youth. “I remember,” says Alexander Knox, “Mr. Wesley told us that his father was the person who composed the well-known speech delivered by Dr. Sacheverell at the close of his trial, and that on this ground, when he, Mr. John Wesley, was about to be entered at Oxford, his father, knowing that the Doctor had a strong interest in the college for which his son was devoted, desired him to call on the Doctor in his way to get letters of recommendation. ‘When I was introduced,’ said Mr. John Wesley, ‘I found him alone, as tall as a maypole, and as fine as an archbishop. I was a very little fellow, not taller’ (pointing to a very gentlemanlike but very dwarfish clergyman who was in the company) ‘than Mr. Kennedy there. He said, “You are too young to go to the University; you cannot know Greek and Latin yet. Go back to school.” I looked at him as David looked at Goliath, and despised him in my heart. I thought, “If I do not know Greek and Latin better than you, I ought to go back to school indeed.” I left him, and neither entreaties nor commands could have again brought me back to him.”

One word about Wesley’s religious life at Charterhouse is necessary. At the time of his conversion, in 1738,* after describing his earlier life at home, he proceeds, “The next six or seven years were spent at school, where, outward restraints being removed, I was much more negligent than before, even of outward duties, and almost continually guilty of outward sins, which I knew to be such, though they were not scandalous in the eye of the world. However, I still read the Scriptures, and said my prayers, morning and evening. And what I now hoped to be saved by was, (i) not being so bad as other people, (2) having still a kindness for religion, and (3) reading the Bible, going to church, and saying my prayers.” It is evident that the old notions of” universal obedience” in which he had been so carefully trained at home had broken down. He was, he says, as ignorant of The true meaning of the Law as of the Gospel. More evangelical teaching would probably have preserved him from the “outward sins” to which he refers. We must not, however, forget how sensitive his conscience was. A schoolboy who read his Bible morning and evening had not gone far astray.

On Founder’s Day, December 12th, 1727, the stewards for the annual dinner of old Carthusians were Dr. King (Master of the Charterhouse), Mr. John Wesley, Mr. Robert Vincent, and Mr. Edward Doyley. The sum of 34 was paid to Mr. West, the cook for the dinner; wines, etc., cost 30 5s. 6d.; “paid musick, as in number two French horns, 12 12s.” Eighty-four persons were at the t These particulars and the bill of fare have been kindly furnished by the Rev. Andrew Clark, of Lincoln College. When we state that roasted pike, fried whitings, flounders, spitched eels, shrimps, tongues, udders, pigeons, venison pasties, chines and turkeys, lamb and ragouts, wild fowls, sweetbreads and dinner, of which the total expenses were 92 I Is. Mr. Vincent paid the bills. At the time of this dinner Wesley had been Fellow of Lincoln College for more than eighteen months.

asparagus, almond tarts, roasted lobsters, pear tarts, sirloin of roasted beef, fruit, jellies, custards, and florentines, figure on this bill of fare, it will be seen that the stewards made a good bargain. They met “at the Crown behind the Exchange” on November 27th to arrange for the dinner, and again on Monday, December 4th. These meetings cost four pounds. “It was judged that twelve servants were enough to wait at the table.” The preacher for the day was Mr. Thomas Rowel, "on account of Mr. Blackwell’s indisposition.”