A Doctor at Twenty

ability (later in life displayed to great advantage as head of the Navy) was certainly above the average.

William III., born at the Hague in the winter which preceded the eventful flight of his brotherin-law King Charles II. (de jure at any rate) after Worcester fight, owed a great deal to the careful training of his able mother, Mary, Princess Royal of England, the eldest daughter of Charles I. His father had died before his birth, and for fourteen years the widowed Princess of Orange devoted herself to personally superintending with more than ordinary intelligence, the education of her son-destined by the irony of fate to snatch the sceptre of her unlucky father from the hands of her scarcely more fortunate brother. At the age of nine he entered the famous University of Leyden. He was soon able to speak four languages with equal ease, and understood three others. Charles de St. Evremond declares that "no person of the Prince's age and quality was ever master of so good a turn of wit."

When the two great English Universities made him a Doctor while in his twentieth year, it was no empty compliment. This was in 1670. Thirtytwo years later William of Orange (Doctor of Laws at both Oxford and Cambridge) died King of England after a reign of thirteen years.

His successor, Queen Anne, was the daughter of his deposed brother-in-law James II. Her education and early training had not by any means been neglected. Like the Electress Sophia of Hanover, who predeceased her by only a few months, she was both a painstaking and capable letter-writer. Beyond informing us that she was a sickly child, and that Lady Frances Villiers, a daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was her first governess, the writer of her memoirs in the "Dictionary of National Bio

graphy," tells us very little of her girlhood. He is presumably more concerned with her theological and political views than with her early mental and physical training. In 1577 when she was twelve, Dr. Edward Lake was appointed to discharge the oftencombined duties of chaplain and tutor, and prepared her for confirmation. At this time Bathshua Makin's school at Tottenham enjoyed a wellmerited reputation amongst ladies of the higher classes.* Mrs. Makin had in her youth taught Charles I.'s little daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, so efficiently, that "at nine years old, she could write, read, and in some measure understand Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Italian." She was even more learned than her namesake Queen Elizabeth, who, just a century before, was said by Ascham to "read more Greek in a day than many Doctors of her time did Latin in a week." It was to Princess Anne's sister, Queen Mary, that Mrs. Makin (who lived to be the tutoress of Elizabeth Montagu's mother) dedicated her elaborate treatise which she entitled " An Essay to revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen in Religion, Manners, Arts, and Tongues: With an Answer to the Objections against this way of Education." It is not impossible that this enlightened lady (whose portrait adorned with no less than four Latin inscriptions, William Marshall has bequeathed to us) had something to do with the upbringing of Queen Mary and Queen Anne, as she was doubtless a persona grata at Court. Two of her Greek letters are preserved in the British Museum, but there is no record of the date of her death. She kept "schools and colleges of the young gentlewomen at Putney, "A Lady of the Last Century (Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu)," by Dr. Doran, F.S.A. London: Richard Bentley, 1855.

A Forgotten Tract

in 1649, and a quarter of a century later her " female seminary" at Tottenham High Cross was at the zenith of its prosperity.

It is to Dr. Philip Hayes, a notable musical composer and virtuoso of the eighteenth century, that we are indebted for the preservation of the first detailed account of the upbringing of a presumptive heir to the British Crown. Philip Hayes occupies a place in the annals of George III.'s reign akin to that filled a century later by the late Sir Arthur Sullivan and Signor Paolo Tosti. He is the author of anthems, glees, and songs innumerable. He was at one time Heather Professor of Music at Oxford, Organist of Magdalen, and one or two other Colleges, and a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal. He was literally the heaviest man of a generation distinguished by an abundance of adipose tissue. His favourite name at the University was "Fill Chaise," and when he hired two seats on the London coach to secure a comfortable place the guard non-plussed him by booking one inside, and the other out. He provided all the incidental music for the celebrated Blenheim theatricals, and enjoyed the intimate friendship of the then reigning Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and their talented children. When Philip Hayes died in London in 1797, he was honoured by a public musical funeral in St. Paul's, all the three royal choirs attending it. It was probably in his capacity of Gentleman of the Chapel Royal that Dr. Hayes came across the forgotten tract of Jenkin Lewis, which he completed and re-edited. The memoirs of the Duke of Gloucester thus happily handed down to us, throw considerable light on the system of education in favour at Court during the last • See Preface, p. 5.

decade of the seventeenth century. Queen Anne's son was born in the first year of the reign of King William and Queen Mary, his uncle by marriage and his aunt. The event we are assured" gave great joy to the whole nation, which soon spread itself to the Hibernian and Scottish shores." The infant Prince must have suffered from a veritable plethora of nurses. Mrs. Shermon, Mrs. Wanley, and Mrs. Pack, all took him in charge. He had convulsions, and was removed for his health's sake to Lord Craven's house in Kensington Gravel Pits. "There," we learn," the young Prince thrived and went out every day, when dry, in the afternoon, in his little coach which the Duchess of Ormond presented him with, and often times in the forenoon; nor was the severity of the winter's cold a pretence for his staying within. The horses, which were no larger than a good mastiff, were under the guidance of Dicky Drury, his coachman.

The young Duke is brought back to Camden House, and the great Dr. Radcliffe is called in, who prescribes liberal doses of "Jesuit's powder now called bark," and frequent blisterings. He has a new nurse, Mrs. Atkinson, who is soon known as "Atty." The siege of Namur and the war in Flanders now come within the range of practical politics. The child-prince, aided by his preceptor, Mr. Prat, takes part in the drilling of a troop of Kensington boys in paper caps armed with wood swords, and the laying out of mimic fortifications. He writes to his uncle: "DEAR KING,

* A hundred and fifty years later the Comte de Paris and the Duc de Chartres indulged themselves in similiar amusements at Claremont. The forts erected by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh at Osborne during the Crimean War were probably more serious undertakings. See p. 303.

The Good Hope and its Owner

You shall have both my companies with you in Flanders."

Notwithstanding the frequent blisterings he is able to learn dancing from Monsieur Gory, a rich old French maître de danse to whom he takes a great liking. We are told that "His breakfasts and suppers were provided by his day nurses for breakfast, milk porridge and a piece of bread and butter; for supper, water gruel, with currants, or veal and chicken broth with barley boiled therein." Frugal fare indeed for the heir to the throne. When five years old "A fancy took him that he would have a real ship with masts and rigging made, to be in his presence as a model. He told my Lord [Lord Berkeley] he would shortly have such an one; and he made me bespeak it at his toy shop in Canon Street. My Lord told him he was very glad he gave his mind to such warlike exercises. He looked up in my Lord's face, and said, 'My Lord you are very old!' which Mrs. Duraine reproved him for; 'I mean my Lord to be out so late at night,' which made his Lordship_smile."

The attention of all England is directed to the Siege of Namur in which King William was taking an active part. A gazette is drawn up at Camden House. "Arrived safe in the Downs, off Kensington Main, the ship called the Good Hope, Prince William Master, whom God preserve; she is a full-rigged ship, built in Canon Street Row, in a creek bordering upon the Port of London, from which she was launched, by order and under the direction, of Jenkin Lewis, Surveyor-General and Engineer to his Royal Highness Prince William, Duke of Gloucester." So proud was the Duke of his ship, that he would often make the boys climb up the masts. "Lewis," said he, "when we are