tion in the

about him.

leg, which, in a few days after, April 15, proved fatal to The tradihim. A tradition since that time has been handed down School in the School that the ghost of the stern master perambulated the dormitories of the old building at midnight on April 15, with clanking chains and measured step. Hence any boy will tell you who Mr. Cawthorn was, while all the other Head Masters are almost a dead letter to them.

in building

The Skinners' Company in 1760 united with the Head He aided Master in building a library at the south end of the School; a library. it is just apparent on the left-hand side in the print opposite page 60.

ment in

Mr. Cawthorn was buried in the Church of Tonbridge, under the School Gallery. A neat mural monument of His monumarble contains the following inscription:-" Hic sepultus, the Church. jacet Jacobus Cawthorn, A.M., Scholæ Tunbrigiensis Magister, qui juventuti tam literis quam moribus instituendæ, operam, magno non sine honore, dedit. Integer-comeset omnibus carus, vixit. Valde desideratus-heu citius! obiit Ap. 15m. 1761. Etat. suæ 49. Opibus quas multis largâ manu distribuit, fruetur, et in æternum fruetur. Soror mæsta ex grato animo hoc posuit."

mory'

WILLIAM WOODFALL was at school about 1745. He is well known by the name of " Memory" Woodfall, as having possessed that most marvellous faculty of memory and fluency "Mewhich served him so well during his life, and preserved his woodfall's name to posterity as a man of literary talent. While at ability. school his ability was put to the test, and so successfully underwent the ordeal, that it would be an injustice to omit the only mention of his youth that is generally known or acknowledged. His master, Mr. Cawthorn, set him one evening a book of Homer to learn by heart, an imposition

Junius'
Letters.

characteristic of the times in general, and of the master who set it in particular. The next morning Woodfall repeated it word for word to Mr. Cawthorn, who, capable of appreciating such rare talent, was so affected as to burst into tears. To follow Woodfall here through his life would be too heavy a task; a few words will give a sufficient outline.

Woodfall was editor and reporter of the "Morning Chronicle" about 1769, and afterwards attached himself to a paper called the "Diary." His great work was, however, He edited the editorship of the "Public Advertiser," in which Junius' Letters appeared. His practice was to secure, by arriving long before the time, a good seat in the House of Commons, and then, with merely a hard-boiled egg for sustenance, he frequently sat for eight or a dozen hours eagerly listening to the animated and frequently stormy debates. Reporting parliamentary debates when no written notes were allowed to be taken, and when one reporter for each newspaper was the maximum allowance of the Houses of Parliament, His great was a very arduous task. With not a single note, and his for report. memory as his only aid, he used, after remaining in the

aptitude

ing.

house thus for hours together, to go home and write such accurate, animated, and life-like reports, that he quickly raised the reputation of his paper as well as his own in public estimation. Reporters in his time were frequently apt to be several days behindhand with their reports, which consequently were often feeble and inaccurate. But punctuality was Woodfall's watchword, and intense application one of his characteristics. However, there sprung up a system of reporters taking turns by the hour or so to report the debates, and this in the end overwhelmed Woodfall. Long did he bravely carry on single-handed the unequal contest,

from the

but at last Woodfall's newspaper waned. The "London Quotation Society," in an article in one of its numbers in 1864, de- "London scribes him as "a rather taciturn man, holding no com- Society." munication with those around him, wholly absorbed in the business, retaining his seat from the beginning to the end of the proceedings, and only satisfying the demands of appetite with the hard-boiled egg which he brought from home in his pocket, and which it was the special delight of the young wags, his rivals, slyly to abstract from its depository and substitute an unboiled one in its stead, an annoyance for which Woodfall never failed to certify his resentment by every demonstration which so silent and self-contained a man could make'." There is also an engraving of Woodfall in this number of "London Society," taken from a portrait in the possession of the family, with "Memory' Woodfall, the father of modern reporting," printed underneath.

1 I have an autograph letter of Woodfall's, inviting an ancestor of mine to

dinner, to meet several literary men of
the day.-S. R.

Mr.

Tower's education

work.

JOHNSON TOWERS, M.A.

1761-1770

UPON the death of Mr. Cawthorn, the Rev. Johnson

Towers became Master of the School. He was born

in 1729 at Kendal, in Westmoreland, and afterwards went to Queen's College, Oxford. At the time of his appointand literary ment to Tonbridge, 1761, he was Master of the Grammar School at Wye, Kent. Previously to that he had been Rector of Pett, Sussex, and while there he edited a text of Cæsar's Commentaries, and wrote a translation to it. There is a second edition of this book in the School Library, dated 1768. Dr. Thomas Knox speaks very highly of Mr. Towers and his book, affirming that, had not translations in general been looked upon then with such an unfavourable eye by School Masters, this Cæsar would have been still better received than it was. In 1764 another warm dispute arose as to the limits of the freedom of the freedom of School, and the matter was referred to the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Yorke, Sir F. Norton, De Grey, Blackstone, and Hussey. Their decision was that "children of the town

Second dispute about the

the School.

and parish of Tunbridge who could write competently and read Latin and English perfectly should be instructed on proper application to the Master, without payment of any consideration, excepting the statutable entrance fee." But Judge Blackstone was of opinion that the College of " All Saints" ought to have been consulted.

Mr. Towers gave up his connexion with the School in 1770, and three years afterwards died, and was buried at Sandon, in Essex.

worth's

career and

LORD WHITWORTH' was educated partly under Mr. Cawthorn and partly under Mr. Towers. Among his School- Lord Whitfellows were Lord Eardley, Colonel James, of Tytham SchoolLodge, Kent, and a Christopher Hull, of Sidcup, to whom fellows. he was "fag." Every body is aware that it was this celebrated nobleman who, during the peace of Amiens, was twice publicly insulted by Napoleon, when in the performance of his duty as English ambassador at Paris. Before this, Lord Whitworth had been an officer in the Guards; he His official had also filled official posts at the courts of Russia, Poland, retirement and Copenhagen, and had been a Privy Councillor. He to Knowle. then retired to Knowle, his country-seat, where he raised, at his own expense, the Holmesdale battalion of infantry, six hundred strong. In 1813 he was made a peer of England (previously having been an Irish peer, with the Order of the Bath), and Viceroy of Ireland. This post he resigned in 1817, and soon after died. He was a benevolent man in His death. private life, and in public was always considered an example of an accomplished English gentleman. One of his last acts was to spend a thousand pounds in employing old people on farm-work about his residence at Knowle.

'Gentleman's Magazine, 1825.