The School was originally a timber building, and the chapel, tower, and library were added to it in 1595. The chapel was consecrated on 18th of May, 1617, by Dr. John Overel, Bishop of Lichfield, and the sermon was preached by Dr. Samson Price, who, for his abhorrence of Popery, was named “The maule and scourge of heretics.” The wood building which contained the first schoolroom was taken down, and the present fine edifice of Grinshill stone erected in its place in 1627. In the centre is a gateway, adorned on each side with a Corinthian column, upon which stand statues of a scholar and a graduate, bare-headed, and in the costume of the period. The library contains a large and valuable collection of books and manuscripts. It was “increased more than double by the testamentary bequest of Dr. John Taylor,” a native of the town, educated at the School. During the mastership of Ashton the School acquired and has since maintained the most brilliant renown. The roll of illustrious students is a lengthy one. Ashton had among his scholars George Sandys, the well-known traveller, whose works obtained great commendation from Dryden and Pope: Sir Henry Sydney, ambassador to France from the court of Edward VI., President of the Welsh Marches, and Lord Deputy of Ireland, which country, says Spenser and Sir John Davies, he governed with great wisdom, and proved himself, according to Sir R. Naunton in the _Fragmenta Regalia_, a “man of great parts:” Sir Fulk Greville, Lord Brooke, an ingenious writer, a friend of Queen Elizabeth, and a poet of repute in his day: Sir Phillip Sidney, the noble and chivalrous soldier and poet whose bravery at the battle of Zutphen is one of the illustrious incidents in our history, and whose exquisite mind is manifested in _Arcadia_ the picturesque and in _Defence of Poesie_ the enchanting. Those were Ashton’s scholars, and besides them there have been educated here Sir Thomas Jones, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the reigns of Charles II. and James II., whose answer to the last monarch’s remark that he could soon have twelve judges of Sir Thomas’s opinion as to his dispensation of power, “Twelve judges you may possibly find, sire, but not twelve lawyers,” is well known: Dr. John Taylor, Canon Residentiary of St. Paul’s, Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln, and Archdeacon of Buckingham, a learned critic and philologist, who wrote a work entitled _Elements of the Civil War_, and published what were said to be excellent editions of Lysias, Demosthenes and Lycurgus: George Saville, Marquis of Halifax, of whose courageous opposition to the unconstitutional conduct of James II. Macaulay speaks, who, under that sovereign, was President of the Council, in the Convention Parliament was Speaker of the House of Lords, and under William and Mary was Lord Privy Seal: Edward Waring, the learned English mathematician and Lucasian Professor of mathematics at Cambridge in the middle of the last century: