 | Westminster School: Encyclopedia II - Westminster School - History
Westminster School - History
The School originally became a Public School (and so available to all members of the public, provided that they could pay for tuition costs) in 1179, as the educational part of the Roman Catholic Abbey at Westminster, the Benedictine monks being required to provide a small charity school by decree of Pope Alexander III. Parts of the School's buildings date back to the eleventh century, and it is quite likely that the first schoolboys were taught by the monks even before then.
However, this arrangement changed in 1540, when King Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the Monasteries of the Catholic Church in England, but personally ensured the School's survival by his royal charter. The College of St. Peter carried on with forty "King's Scholars" funded from the royal purse. Although during Queen Mary I's brief reign the Abbey was reinstated as a Roman Catholic monastery, it was redissolved on Queen Elizabeth I's accession, and neither of these events had a major impact on the School. The School occupies a number of the buildings vacated by the monks.
Elizabeth I refounded the School in 1560, with new statutes to select 40 Queen's Scholars from boys who had already attended the school for a year. Queen Elizabeth frequently visited her scholars, although she never signed the statutes nor endowed her scholarships, and this date is now generally taken as the date that the school was "founded", although effective separation from the Abbey was only achieved with the Public Schools Act.
In 1679, a group of scholars killed a bailiff; the exact details are unclear, but it may have been purely over the requisition, or because of a harassment of a mistress of one of the scholars. The school petitioned Charles II to grant a pardon, the cost of which was added to the school bill by Dr. Busby.
The Public Schools Act 1868, in response to the Clarendon Report, was the juncture at which the School began to resemble its modern form. Prior to this, the curriculum was made up of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, nearly all taught Up School. The report was in response to many unpleasant practices at public schools, including regular abuse of younger pupils by older pupils and teachers. For their part Westminsters were known to regularly frequent prostitutes, and the proximity of the School to the Palace of Westminster meant that politicians were all too aware of the problems. Unusually amongst the major public schools however, Westminster did not submit to the further Victorian reforms associated with Thomas Arnold, with their preferred emphasis on muscular christianity, gentlemanly codes and team games and spirit ahead of individual scholarship.
Westminster Under School was formed in 1943, as a semi-separate entity for the teaching of day pupils from the ages of 8 to 13 (now 7 to 13). Only the separation is new: in previous generations, for instance, Gibbon attended Westminster from the age of 11. Originally situated in Little Dean's Yard (the main square of the School, off Dean's Yard), it later took residence in Vincent Square, overlooking the School's playing fields. The current headmaster of the Under School is Mr. Jeremy Edwards.
In 1967, the first female pupil was admitted to the School, with girls becoming full members of the Upper School from 1973 onwards.
In 1979, the school was the subject of "Public School", a then unprecedented BBC documentary by Mary Rose-Richards, Edward Mirzoeff, and Jonathan Gili, still unmatched in its wholly unrestricted access to a public school.
During the Winter of Discontent, some of the Queens Scholars were chastised by policemen for singing the Gilbert and Sullivan song Bow, Bow Ye Lower-Middle Classes (or Loudly let the trumpet bray) from the anti-establishment satire Iolanthe during one of the demonstrations outside Parliament.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
