' When I was yet a child, no chihlish play To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set, Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, What might bo public good.' — Paradise Regained. [B. i. 201 204.]
The 'school near Pakenham church ' has long since disappeared,
* ' Slaidmss' is the very word Lord Brooke uses to describe the youthhood of Sir Pliili[) Sidney : and indeed his whole description is reflected in the above. Cf. the Life of tlie renowned Sir I'hilip Sidney (ed. 1G52), pp. 6, 7.
MEMOIR OF RICHARD SIBEES, D.D. SXxi
and no memorial whatever has been transmitted of it. The man- sion of Pakenham was the seat of the Gages, Avhence the mother of Sir Nicholas Bacon, father of the Bacon, came ; and later was the residence of Sir William Spring, at whose request Catlin drew up his notice of Sibbes. Probably, we err not in tracing back the after-friendship with Sibbes to those school-boy days. One likes to picture little Master Richard in his leathern suit (not at all uncom- mon at the period), studiously walking day by day from Pakenham to Thurston, and home again. Nor can we avoid thinking of other * boys,' who were then likewise ' at school,' and destined to cross one another's paths. Not a few of them will be found united in inti- mate friendship with the little leathern-suited pupil of Master Brigs. With others he came into conflict. They are relegated to a foot- note.*
Having obtained all that he could, apparently, at the school of Master Brigs (of whom nothing has come down), little Richard, as our last citation from the vicar's manuscript has anticipated us in stating, was sent to Bury St Edmunds, to the ' Free School' there, by which must be intended the still famous * School ' founded by Edward VI. ; and we can very well understand the zest with which one so thoughtful and eager would avail himself of the advantages of such an institution. Dr Donaldson has failed to enrol Sibbes among the celebrities of the school, an omission which, it is to be hoped, will
* Contemporary ' boys.' The greatest of all, Master Willie Shakespeare, rising into his teens, has only very lately been tossing his auburn curls at Stratford 'school;' and, still a 'boy,' is now wooing his fair Anne Hathaway. Master Joseph Hall is playing about Bristow Park, Ashby-de la-Zouch, under the eye of Mi.'^tress Winifred, of whom he was to write so tenderly as his more than Monica. Away in the downs of Berks, diminutive Willie Laud is playing at marbles under the acacia-walk of Reading. Master George Herbert is ruffling the humour of his stately brother, afterwards Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the 'doubter,' by overturning a glass of malmsey on his slashed hose and ' roses of his shoon.' In not distant Tarring, Master John Selden is already storing up in the wizard cave of memory those treasures of learning the world is one day to marvel at. Masters Phineas and Giles Fletcher are truanting in the linden glades of their father's vicarage. Masters (ieorge Wither and Francis Quarles are agog (in strange contrast with their grim scorn of such ' gaudery,' by-and-byc) over their new lace-frill. Master William Browne is chasing the butterflies in Tavistock. Masters Ussher andHobbes are perchance busy over their ABC. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher are still asunder. Master Massinger, tossing ha'pence under the minster of Salisbury, no vision yet of the ' Virgin Martyr,' and no shadow of the ' stranger s grave ' he is to fill. Moreover, as Master Sibbes was thus footing it between Thurston and Bury, men were alive who had seen martyr faces, ' pale i' the fire.' In the words of Bourne, of a few years earlier, 'The Engli!>h air was thick with sighs and curses. Great men [were] lu avy-hearted at the misery which had fallen upon the land .... and he [may] have listened to their earnest, mournful talk. (Memoirs of Philip Sidney, by H. R. Fox Bourne, 8vo, 18G2, pp. 9, 10. )
MEMOIR OF EICHARD SIBBES, D.D.
henceforward be supplied, for any school may boast of a name so venerable as the author of the ' Bruised Reed.' In the ' registers of the school the name of Sibbes has not been recorded. One would have been glad to know some of his schoolmates. I am not aware that history or biography has named any of them, none at any rate more distinguished than himself The statutes and other documentary manuscripts of the school have been lost, and nothing is known of its celebrated scholars till 1610 — long subse- quent to Sibbes — when the list is headed by that twin-brother to Pepys, Sir Symonds D'Ewes. Only one Master is given before 1583, a Philip Mandevill. In 1583, the office was filled by a John Wright, M.A., and in 1596, by Edmund Coote, M.A., who seems to have pub- lished his ' English Schoolmaster ' (hardly to be placed beside ' The Schoolmaster ' of Roger Ascham, though not without merit), during his short term of office.
The earliest extant list of 'boys' is dated 1656. It is a fine glimpse of the student-boy old Catlin gives, leisurely footing from Pakenham to Thurston, and it is to be remembered he did the same to the more distant Bury. We can avouch that, in this good year Eighteen hundred and sixty-two, twenty-fourth of Queen Victoria I., few more pleasant rural roads can be found than that which now winds from Thurston to Bury. On either side are picturesque hurdle-fences tangled with purple cornel, or hedge-rows odorous with hawthorn spray. But it must have been very different in Master Richard's time. Macadam was still unborn ; and even a century and half later, Arthur Young* has anything but praise for this turnpike. ' I was forced," he tells us in reference to it, ' to move as slow in it as in any unmended lane in Wales. For ponds of liquid dirt, and a scattering of loose flints, just sujficient to lame every horse that moves near them, with the addition of cutting vile grips across the road, under the pretence of letting the water off, but without effect, altogether render at least twelve out of these sixteen miles (between Bury and Sudbury) as infamous a turnpike as ever was beheld.' Alas ! for bookish, studious Master Richard, if he found his school-walk such a Slough-of-Despond.