But Dugard averred that the decline of the school and the shrinkage of its numbers were due to the Company's order of March 16, 1659, which forbad him to admit any scholar who had not a warrant from the Master and Wardens, and the consequence was that parents, not caring to go to the Court, took their sons elsewhere. As many as sixty boys had been lost in this way within a twelvemonth, he maintains. "True it is," he pleads, "that an hundred years ago, when it was an hard matter to get a Scholar to read Greek, there was such an Order made, that no Scholar should be taught in the School, unless first admitted by the Company. But afterward there was found a necessity to dispense with that Order, and so it was with my Predecessors; which I can prove for above threescore years bygone. They (and my self too from them, untill the last year) had such an indulgence that did not limit or restrain them to admit quarterly-Scholars, who did not immediately depend on the Charity of the Company: and the Motto engraven on the School speaks as much; _Nulli præcludor, Tibi pateo_." The _Remonstrance_ did not please the Merchant Taylors, and in a second document, dated June 12, 1661, Dugard tried to soften what he had said; for his language, it must be allowed, was rather energetic, considering that he was in the hands of those who had the power to act as they judged fit. Whatever the precise result was, there are two or three curious points brought out in the course of the head-master's vindication, and one can hardly avoid a conclusion that the main cause of the discontent of the Court was not even so much the application of a portion of his time to literary pursuits, as the abuse of the permission to set up a printing-press by employing the machinery, intended only for the production of school text-books, for political publications of a republican stamp. This fact does not transpire in the tract itself, but is ascertained from the imprints to books; and moreover, in 1650, at the end of a periodical publication, he had announced himself as _Printer to the Council of State_; so that altogether the Merchant Taylors might be naturally afraid of incurring the displeasure of the new masters of England by retaining the holder of opinions hostile to the Stuarts. He had sold the press at the desire of the Company for £300 less than the cost; and this was by no means the full extent of his sacrifices and misfortunes. For he gives his principals to understand that he had grown lean by the observance of fast-days in accordance with their recent order; and, moreover, that during his nineteen years' term of office he had lost £800 by unpaid quarter wages, thus making it seem probable that he was directly responsible for the fees. Altogether, nothing worse than indiscretion, perhaps, was chargeable to Dugard. "I bless God for it," he expressly says, "I know the Divel himself cannot justly accuse me of any notorious or scandalous Crime."