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DEAN COLET (1467–1519)

From an engraved portrait in Holland’s Heroologia.

In the reign of Henry VI. (1447), four new grammar schools had been established in the City: viz. in the parishes of All Hallows the Great; St. Andrew’s Holborn; St. Peter’s Cornhill; and in St. Thomas Acons’ Hospital. Nine years later, five other parish schools had been founded or restored, namely, that of St. Paul’s; of St. Martin’s; of St. Mary le Bow; of St. Dunstan’s in the East; and of St. Anthony’s Hospital. All these schools seem to have fallen more or less into decay during the next hundred years. But very little indeed is known as to the condition of education during this period. There is, however, no doubt that in the year 1509 the Dean of St. Paul’s, John Colet, found the condition of St. Paul’s School very much decayed. He was himself a man of large means, being the son of a rich merchant who had been Sheriff in 1477, Mayor in 1486, and Alderman, first of Farringdon Ward Without, and afterwards of Castle Baynard and Cornhill successively. The Dean resolved upon building a new school and endowing it. He therefore bought a piece of land on the east side of the Cathedral; there placed a school and entrusted the revenues with which he endowed it to the Mercers’ Company, saying, that though there was nothing sacred in human affairs, he yet found the “least corruption” among them. Later on, the Merchant Taylors founded a school; the Mercers founded another school; and John Carpenter, Clerk, founded the City of London School. The educational endowments founded by London citizens amount to nearly a hundred.