Merchant Taylors' School is a public day school for boys founded in 1561 in London. The school has occupied various campuses over its lifetime. From 1933, it has been located at Sandy Lodge, a site close to Northwood in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire.
Founded in 1561 by Sir Thomas White, Sir Richard Hilles, Emanuel Lucar and Stephen Hales, it was one of the nine English public schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission set up in 1861, but successfully argued that it should be omitted from the Public Schools Act 1868, as did St Paul's School, London, the other day school investigated by the Clarendon Commission.
The school caters for 1100 students between the ages of 11 and 18. The school is now an all-through school from age 3 to 18 after merger with Northwood Prep School in 2015.
The school's old boys, called Old Merchant Taylors (OMTs), include naturalists, poets, actors, academics, politicians, authors, sportsmen, and military figures, including three winners of the Victoria Cross award. OMTs include Lancelot Andrewes, who oversaw the translation of the King James' Bible; John Walter, founding editor of The Times; John Sulston, Nobel laureate in Physiology and Medicine; Marshal of the Royal Air Force The Lord Stirrup, former Chief of the Defence Staff; historian E. H. Carr; actor Boris Karloff; Lord Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Clive and many more. In the arts, OMTs have won Academy, Emmy and Grammy Awards. There is also a strong OMT presence in both Houses of Parliament.
History
Founding and early years
The school was founded in 1561 by Thomas White of the Merchant Taylors' Company in a manor house in the parish of St Lawrence Pountney in the City of London, where it remained until 1875.
A curious account survives of a rent payment ritual in London for the Merchant Taylors School in which Sir Rowland Hill, the Lord Mayor of London in 1549 who had coordinated the Geneva Bible translation, presided shortly before he diedThe xxx day of September my lord mayre and the althermen and the new shreyffes took ther barges at the iij cranes in the Vintre and so to Westmynster, and so into the Cheker, and ther took ther hoythe; and ser Rowland Hyll whent up, and master Hoggys toke ser Rowland Hyll a choppyng kneyf, and one dyd hold a whyt rod, and he with the kneyf cute the rod in sunder a-for all the pepull; and after to London to ther plases to dener, my lord mayre and all the althermen and mony worshiphulle men.Merchant Taylors' was not the first school to be founded by members of the Merchant Taylors' Company. Sir John Percival (Master of the Company in 1485, Lord Mayor of London in 1498) established a grammar school at Macclesfield in 1502, while in 1508 his widow founded one at St. Mary's Wike in Cornwall (which moved to Launceston shortly thereafter). Also in 1508, Sir Steven Jenyns (Master in 1490, Lord Mayor in 1508) founded Wolverhampton Grammar School, which still maintains strong links with the Company.
The first Head Master, Richard Mulcaster, took up his post in 1561; one of the houses at Merchant Taylors' is now named after him. His educational philosophy is embodied in two books, The Positions (1581) and The Elementarie (1582), the latter an instalment of a larger work and one of the first dictionaries in English. One of his first pupils was Edmund Spenser. His goal was that English as a language might claim its place side by side with Latin:
Mulcaster's views were ahead of his time: he advocated the importance to children of relaxation and games, and a knowledge of the countryside and world of nature. He "wished that schools were planted in the suburbs of towns near to the fields". He was also "tooth and nail for womankind" in matters of education. He believed that education should fit women for their appropriate station.
The successive outbreaks of plague in 1592, 1603, 1626, 1630, 1637 and 1666, had a damaging effect on the School and its pupils. The School was obliged to break up during these periods, losing pupils and sometimes unable to take on new ones. In 1626 the headmaster Nicholas Gray complained of the loss of pupils and was given £20 to keep the school going; in 1630 he was given £40. Many parents kept their sons away from school, and boarders were summoned home.
The School was closed for at least a year in 1636 and 1637, with no new boys admitted until the contagion abated. The outbreak of 1666 was curtailed by the Great Fire of London, which started on 2 September close to Suffolk Lane and completely destroyed the school buildings. It was rebuilt by 1675, after classes had met in temporary quarters for years.