CHAPTER ONE ST CLEMENT'S PARISH On 29 May 1660, John Evelyn found himself in the Strand and watched the return to London of King Charles II - "I stood in the Strand and beheld it and blessed God. And all this without one drop of blood but it was the Lord's doing". Neither place nor people more typified the changes taking place than that group of spectators who stood with Evelyn in the Strand. During the previous forty years, the area had been developed on a massive scale. Although prohibited by Royal Proclamation, new building had sprung up along the Strand, in Drury Lane, Covent Garden, Long Acre and Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the parish of St Clement Danes had acquired a new burial ground in Portugal Street in 1638, the area was still so rustic that it had been nicknamed "Green Ground" and this land, surrounded by hedges and a wooden gate, had been let out for sheep to graze. Barely more than a decade later, a new market had been established nearby by the Earl of Clare. Clare Market was no Covent Garden with its elegant piazza. Here the buildings were jerry-built and swiftly packed with the poorest form of tradesmen, people who by lack of training could never trade among the guilds of the City of London but nevertheless sought to undercut their more professional neighbours on the other side of Temple Bar. With the king came a restoration of both the constitution and England's Established Church. That the Church too should be restored was in itself nothing short of a miracle. Before the Civil War, the Church of England had come under violent attack from those who wanted to introduce a purer form of Reformation into the country. Nearly twenty years of Puritanism had now passed; that had been enough to dissuade all but the most determined souls of the folly of this attempt to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. For the Church, while it may have regained its old position, things were never going to be as they had been before the War. New sects - Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Quakers and Baptists - soon sprang up. In an area which had been so recently developed and where so many of the population were recent arrivals, a potential breeding ground for Nonconformity had been established. Yet even then, the parish of St Clement Danes was already the best part of a thousand years old. By London standards, it was large and must surely have had some earlier provision for education. Of this we know nothing. During medieval times, it was usual for the priests who served the chantry chapels in the parish church to teach in their spare time, of which they would have had plenty. St Clement Danes certainly had several such chantries. When the Reformation swept these away, many parishes took the opportunity to replace these with grammar schools. Nothing of this sort happened at St Clement's, where the involvement of the parish in education seems to have ceased for more than a century. Perhaps it was not needed, as there would have been plenty of small private schools prepared to take in children for a few pence a week, though most were little better than what we would now call child-minders. There are, however, definite indications that a school, or schools, had been functioning during the latter part of the seventeenth century. The staff of the School Treasurer, though not made until the early nineteenth century, bears the inscription "Founded 1668". Though there is not 1 now any evidence to support this specific date, it is clear that an earlier school was in existence by the 1660s. The clearest evidence comes from a licence granted by the Bishop of London on 26 April 1666 in response to the following request by Dr Dukeson, the Rector, "These are to certify that the bearer hereof Thomas Griffith hath bin but lately approved of & admitted by me & the Ancients of the Parish of St Clement Danes as schoolmaster, to teach their children in a school appointed for that purpose, And that by reason of his so late beginning as also this contagious season he hath hitherto made but very small benefit of his said Imployment. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand this 25th of Aprill An Dm 1666". This seems to suggest that his work had been started some time earlier but that it had inevitably been affected by the plague raging in the summer of 1665. Whether the school was an entirely new venture or whether Griffith was but the latest in a series of schoolmasters is not clear. The St Clement's Vestry Minutes contain occasional references to the parish school. On 6 September 1675, they contain a reference that the Vestry "Ordered that Mr John Pride shall bee and is hereby elected by this Society to bee Schoole master of the Church Schoole in the place and stead of Mr Thomas Griffith lately deceased; And his time to commence att Mich[aelm]as next, And to take and receive to his owne use the benefitt thereof during the pleasure of this Society". Both these references may suggest that the school was privately run but somehow under the control of the parish. Within months, the Churchwardens' accounts contain a payment of eight shillings "expended and laid out att two meetings of some of the Ancients when we settled Mr Pride in the Church School" and this man was still around a year later when the churchwardens bought an academic hood for him at a cost of twenty five shillings. Only when the Charity Schools were opened did this old school pass away. Even the new schools' own ledger contains a reference to £2 10s being received in 1702 as "Mr Wood's rent in the old school". 2 After the moral laxity of the court of Charles II - the "Merrie Monarch" (whose most famous mistress, Nell Gwynne, had been a resident of Drury Lane) - there was a reaction in society. A new mood of spiritual revival took place. Groups were formed which pledged their members to lead moral lives, to study the scriptures and to attend church on a regular basis. The leaders of this movement were predominantly the ministers of the churches of London. As the century came to a close, this renewed optimism and the threat to the Church from outside sects resulted in the formation of a number of Church of England societies for furthering the faith. Foremost of these was the Honourable Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge - the "SPCK". The SPCK was founded in 1698 by a group of leading clergy and laymen and instantly found support throughout the country. Its principal founder was Dr Thomas Bray, Rector of St Botolph, Aldgate, who is known to have preached at St Clement Danes on several occasions. Its initial remit was so wide as to encompass almost every aspect of Christian ministry. Foremost among its aims was the foundation of a countrywide chain of schools where children should be educated in "the Knowledge and Practice of the Christian Religion as Professed and Taught in the Church of England and for teaching such things as are most suitable for their condition". These schools were to be maintained by the subscriptions and benefactions of well wishers rather than becoming supported by the local rates. Money was soon being raised for the new schools and some existing but impoverished church schools applied to join the new scheme. Though there is no evidence that the existing St Clement's school joined the SPCK, it is likely that the advent of new schools spelled the demise of whatever was in existence before. The SPCK itself was keen neither to run nor maintain the schools but restricted its role to providing advice for their foundation and organisation, the books and curriculum to be followed and on the selection of schoolmasters. In a matter of only a few months since the foundation of the SPCK, dozens of Charity Schools had been founded. In most large and vigorous parishes, enough well-disposed parishioners were to be found who would promote such an undertaking. The scene was now set for St Clement Danes to join their number. 3 CHAPTER TWO THE SCHOOLS OPEN The response from the parishes of London and Westminster was dramatic. These were the areas of highest population density and where the children of the poor could all too easily be swayed into joining other denominations. Within the first ten years of the SPCK's foundation most of these parishes had established schools; by 1707, there were sixty-nine schools in London and its suburbs, with nearly three thousand children attending them. The minutes of the SPCK begin on 8 March 1699 and it is not long before we find mention of St Clement Danes among the parishes interested in forming a school. On 26 October 1699, it was reported "that a subscription is begun at St Clemens, which will amount to forty pounds per annum". This is our first indication that parishioners were working actively to form a new school in their midst. On 8 February of the following year a further reference is made that "the School of St Clement's wanted a recommendation to the Dean of Windsor, the Minister of the said parish". This was Dr Gregory Haskard, Rector of St Clement Danes from 1678 to 1708, and for much of that time Dean of Windsor also. He cannot have been unaware of the work of the SPCK as he must have known some of its founders personally.