School-life at Winchester College : $b or, the reminiscences of a Winchester junior under the old régime, 1835-40. — John Shaqi
School-life at Winchester College : $b or, the reminiscences of a Winchester junior under the old régime, 1835-40.Mansfield, Robert Blachford
History
School-life at Winchester College : $b or, the reminiscences of a Winchester junior under the old régime, 1835-40.
Mansfield, Robert Blachford
Students -- England -- Winchester; Winchester College -- History
The hours of worship (now, I believe, somewhat altered) used to be as
follows:—At six A.M. in summer, at a quarter before seven in winter,
at eight and at half-past ten A.M., and at five P.M., on Sundays,[6]
Saints’-days, and Founder’s Anniversaries. On Fridays at eleven A.M., and
on Saturdays at five P.M. the boys might be seen trooping across the
quadrangle on their way to Chapel—on Sundays and on Saints’-days clad
in white surplices. Besides this, every evening at nine prayers used to
be read by the junior Præfect in Antechapel, who stood on the top of
the steps leading up to one of the curtained and barred pews reserved
for ladies, one of which was placed on each side of Antechapel; the
fair occupants, not being allowed to enter the body of the chapel, were
obliged to content themselves with looking and listening through the
grating.
Once a year all the boys who had passed the age of fifteen, (and who
had not previously gone through the same ceremony,) were marshalled
into Chapel, and, under the inspection of “Semper Testis,” (the legal
aide-de-camp of the College authorities,) went through the form of taking
an oath. I have no distinct recollection of the form of the proceeding,
(it is now abolished,) but I think the official above-mentioned read out
a Latin document, and we were supposed to say Amen. I believe the gist of
it was that we were to defend and befriend the college to the best of
our ability, and never tell anybody what went on within its walls. I am
sure I should require no compulsion to carry out the former obligation,
should the occasion occur, and I had any possible means of fulfilling my
duty, and if I have done no more harm in writing this little sketch of
our proceedings at Winchester than infringing the latter, my conscience
will not be much troubled. Although the making a number of thoughtless
boys go through a ceremony of this kind may seem objectionable, yet it is
not the part of a Wykehamist to exclaim against it, as, according to well
authenticated tradition, Cromwell would have destroyed the College, had
he not yielded to the urgent representations of one of his officers, who
was a Wykehamist, and, mindful of his oath, succeeded in saving the noble
establishment from its impending fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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