This seminary has been long celebrated for the erudition of its scholars. Under the “excellent and worthie” Thomas Ashton, it flourished eminently. At one period he had 290 pupils, among whom we notice Sir Henry Sydney, whose son, the heroic Sir Philip Sydney, laid here the seeds of that exemplary friendship with the celebrated Sir Fulk Greville, Lord Brook, which he maintained through the whole of his short but splendid career. Beside these, the noted Jeffries, Lord Chief Justices Jones and Price; Drs. Bowers and Thomas, Bishops of Chichester and Salisbury; the Rev. John Taylor, L.L.D. and the celebrated Dr. Waring, received their education here. Nor does the present character of the school fall short of that distinguished pre-eminence which it formerly sustained. Under the judicious direction of the learned Dr. Butler, it is in a flourishing state. Not only do the children of the principal families in the adjacent counties and North Wales, receive the rudiments of their learning here, but also those of many families of distinction from distant parts of the empire. The appointment of master rests solely in the fellows of St. John’s College, Cambridge; that of ushers and the mode of instruction is vested in the head master. The House of Industry. This handsome brick building, situated on the opposite side of the river to the Quarry, was erected in 1765, as a Foundling Hospital, at an expence of £12,000. Numbers of children were sent here from London, and placed out at nurse during their infancy with the neighbouring cottagers, under the superintendance of the surrounding gentry. When arrived at a proper age, they were brought into this house and employed in various branches of a woollen manufactory, and afterwards apprenticed to various individuals. About 1774, however, the governors finding their funds inadequate to the support of the charity, the house was shut up; and a few years after was rented by government, who in the American war used it as a place of confinement for Dutch prisoners.