351 CHAPTER X. JOHN VERNEY, THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE. 1653 to 1662. Go, silly worm, drudge, trudge, and travel, SYLVESTER. THE career of Sir Ralph's second son, John Verney, as portrayed in the old letters, gives us as complete a picture of the progress of the industrious apprentice of the seventeenth century as Hogarth's famous series does of the eighteenth century, and with results even more splendid than the wedding with the merchant's daughter, and the Lord Mayor's coach, of Hogarth's highly moral climax. Our apprentice becomes a baronet, a landed proprietor, and a member of Parliament; and at last in the final scene his linen cap has been transformed into a viscount's coronet (with an earldom in prospect for his heirs), and we leave him with all that 'should accompany old age-as honour, love, obedience, troops of friends.' Virtue herself stands aghast at the material rewards she has heaped up, and we feel more affection for the elder brother, with his blighted hopes and wasted opportunities, than the younger inspires, with all his success and prosperity. But the boy must have had no common strength of purpose who, in the evil days of the Stuart Restoration, could set his face so resolutely to a life of humdrum industry. Other youths of good family, his cousins and contemporaries, were idling away their lives, pretending to work at the Bar or struggling for a place at Court, while some, like 'Cousin Hals' and 'Cousin Turville,' even took to the road' and ended with the gallows. Nat Hobart, John Stewkley, and many of Sir Ralph's best friends had sons, who, not attaining to such a melodramatic end, yet brought nothing but debt and disappointment to their fathers' doors. If there was an absence of romance in the life of a man whose best years were devoted to the making of money, other fathers may well have envied Sir Ralph a son who at fifteen chose his own profession; who enjoyed his work as other men did not enjoy their pleasures; and whose aspirations were so reasonable, and plans so well-laid, that Fortune could not feel herself justified in frustrating them. A pleasant, happy child, little Jack was welcome everywhere. In his baby days he had trotted after his mother, singing and chattering, and cheering her progress through the empty rooms at Claydon, when her husband was in exile. At ten years old Aunt Sherard writes of him: 'I have chosen Jack to be my galant, and I thinke I have as fine A one, as any in the towne.' Their precise and methodical father always leant upon John while he was inclined to depreciate Edmund. But his partiality bred no ill-will between the brothers, who were throughout life the best of friends. 1654 At an age when little boys are apt to be equally trying to their garments and guardians-female--Luce Sheppard wrote, Mr. John hath keept his Mar. 30, clothes in so good order, I have not had to buy anything for him next weecke I will send him againe to scholle, allthough wee are great gainers by his sober company; yet wee must consider him that hee losse not by ours.' Before his return from Blois, Sir Ralph had been pondering over this question of Jack's schooling. He was not in love with the new doctrines, and what we should now call a Church School was liable at any moment to have its light extinguished. By a stringent ordinance passed in 1654, ministers and schoolmasters who are or shall be Ignorant, Scandalous, Insufficient, or Negligent,' were to be ejected or restrained from teaching. It was hard indeed to find a schoolmaster with Royalist and Episcopal leanings, who could not be included in one or other of these categories; when not merely the preaching of disaffection against the government, but the profanation of the Sabbath, the use of the Book of Common Prayer, the encouragement of gambling, of May-poles, and of stage-plays, were all VOL. III. A A Sept. 1653 classed together as forbidden things. Under conditions so precarious, the Rev. Dr. James Fleetwood kept a school at Barn Elms in Surrey. His cousin, Charles Fleetwood, and his brother George were amongst Cromwell's strongest supporters, but he held firmly to the old opinions. It does not appear why Sir Ralph preferred a private to a public school, his own brothers had been at Winchester, the Stewkleys had a boy there, and the Doctor thought it 'a very fitt place for Jack ;' perhaps he was afraid of the well-known Puritan principles of Warden Harris.1 Aunt Sherard writes from Whitsondine that if Sir Ralph does not mind 'a scoole soe far off of London, here is a very good one within 7 miles of me, at A plas called Uppingham; the master hath the report of A very gentille man, and if you send him this waies, I will have a care of him, for I can nevr dow enoufe for you, for the care you have had of mine... the scoolmaster,' she writes again, 'is comended for a sivill and A well bred man, which I know will be very yousful to your young mounseer.' 1 There was an old connection with the school in both families; an Edmund Verney was a Winton scholar in 1508, and a Richard Stewkeley, of Hawkley, Hants, in 1505. John Potenger was headmaster in 1653, and was succeeded by William Burt from 1654 to 1657; but the headmasters were little more than ushers during the Commonwealth, the wardens were the great men. I am indebted to G. M. A. Hewett, Esq., of Winchester College, for this information. 2 E. C. Selwyn, Esq., headmaster of Uppingham, kindly informs me that he can discover no old record of the school, or even of the headmasters before this century. He also says that Whissendine is quite ten miles off, another instance of the computed distances' in the old letters being shorter than the measured miles. But Sir Ralph did object to the distance from town, and Jack was sent to Barn Elms. The first leaving home is a sad ordeal, even with the luxuries and refinements of the modern preparatory school ; and it must have been hard indeed to Jack. His ignorance of the traditions of English schoolboys, his little 'french aire' and foreign accent, so much admired by Luce Sheppard and his cousins, and the very cut of his clothes, no doubt exposed him to unsparing ridicule in the rough young world of those days; the lively child became for a time a grave and silent boy. The doctor writes, 'our schools doe Cow and over awe him; and six months later Mrs. Isham says, 'All ye falte I could find in him, he was y sobrist youth that ever I did see, but my hope is that he had more metill in my absence than I could parswad him to in my presence.' 'Dr. Fleetwood, his wife, and Queen Kate scold grievously, that Monsr. Jehan is kept noe better in cloaths.' To be correct in all matters of school etiquette was doubtless as important in the seventeenth century as it is in the nineteenth, and a special sort of taper was just then in fashion at Dr. Fleetwood's. 'Je vous prie,' Jack writes, 'de manvoier de la chandelle de cirre entortillé, car tous les garçons en ont pour brullay et moy ie n'en ay point pour moy.' In school Jack's diligence is commended by his master; he is very ingenious 1 March 1 1 Ingenuous and ingenious are used interchangeably in the seventeenth century. Since Heaven is so glorious a state let us spend . . . 1655 |