School life in the seventeenth century was a totally different thing from what it is to-day; all sorts of queer usages and ideas prevailed. In 1662, for instance, smoking was actually made compulsory for Eton boys. This was during the plague, when, according to one Tom Rogers, all the boys were obliged to “smoak” in the school every morning, and he himself was never whipped so much in his life as he was one morning for not “smoaking.” [Illustration: Eton in the Seventeenth Century, by Loggan. _Print lent by the Earl of Rosebery, K.G._] As showing the school life of the period the following bill for “extras” is interesting. It was for a boy named Patrick, from April 1687 to March 1688, and bears Newborough’s receipt as Headmaster. Carriage of letters, etc. £0 2 4 For a bat and ram club 0 0 9 Four pairs of gloves 0 2 0 Eight pairs of shoes 0 16 0 Bookseller’s bill 0 14 2 Cutting his hair eight times 0 2 0 Wormseed, treacle and manna 0 2 8 Mending his clothes 0 2 8 Pair of garters 0 0 3 School fire 0 3 0 Given to the servants 0 12 6 A new frock 0 5 8 --------- £3 4 0 Paid the writing-master half a year, due next April 21, ’89 1 0 0 --------- The “bat and ram club” was used in connection with an extremely barbarous custom of hunting and killing a ram at election-tide, the poor animal being provided by the College butcher. So popular was this brutal sport, that boys summoned home before the last day of the half wrote beseeching their parents to allow them to remain and see “ye ram” die according to custom. This ram-baiting appears to have taken its origin from a usage connected with the Manor of Wrotham in Norfolk, given to the College by the founder. At Wrotham Manor during the harvest-home a ram was let loose and given to the tenants if they could catch him. For many years later the brutal sport continued to flourish, a ram hunt in the playing fields being attended by the Duke of Cumberland on Election Saturday 1730, when he was nine years old. He struck the first blow, and is said to have returned to Windsor “very well pleased.”