We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
THE AUTHOR
Born in Southampton in 1504, Nicholas Udall attended Winchester College from 1517 and went up to Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1520. After a period as a Fellow of Corpus and university lecturer in Logic, he left Oxford in 1529 and made a living as a writer and freelance scholar before being appointed headmaster of Eton in 1534. While at Eton, Udall seems to have developed a reputation for the zealous administration of corporal punishment. A former pupil was later to protest about his treatment at the headmaster's hands in doggerel verse.
From Paul's I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straightways the Latin phrase;
Where fifty-three stripes given to me at once I had
For fault but small, or none at all.
See, Udall, see, the mercy of thee, to me, poor lad.
But it was his departure from Eton, rather than the disciplinary regime he oversaw there, which has aroused the most anxious scholarly comment.
On 12 March 1541, one John Hoorde, late scholar of Eton, was examined by the Privy Council in connection with a robbery he had committed at the college in company with another former pupil. On the following day the second scholar, Thomas Cheyney, was also questioned and, like Hoorde, confessed his involvement in the crime. William Ember, a London goldsmith who evidently acted as a fence for the boys, was also committed to custody ‘for the buying of certain images of silver and other plate which was stolen from the college of Eton’.
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this book to your organisation's collection.