Ralph Arnold: The Whiston Matter
The Reverend Robert Whiston versus The Dean and Chapter of Rochester
Chapter I
Prelude
In his Barsetshire novels, which began with The Warden and ended with The Last Chronicle of Barset, Anthony Trollope established an unforgettable image of a cathedral and its chapter; and generations of Trollopians have presumably been satisfied, if they have thought about the matter at all, that his portrait of Barchester was a reasonably true- to-life picture of a south-country cathedral establishment in the middle of the nineteenth century. Yet, as the novelist admits in his autobiography, when he wrote The Warden he had never, since his schooldays at Winchester, lived in a cathedral city, he had no first-hand knowledge of the ways of a close, and no archdeacon had as yet crossed his path. He had evolved his cathedral dignitaries, apparently, from an instinct for what a bishop, a dean, a prebendary, an archdeacon and a minor canon ought to be like, and how they might be expected to behave; complemented, as he explains, by a study of the newspaper reports of two clerical scandals of the time — in fact the case of the Hospital of St Cross at Winchester, and the Rev. Robert Whiston's dispute with the Dean and Chapter of Rochester. In the light of this admission the accepted picture, on a closer examination of the facts, might well turn out to be hopelessly misleading.
The outline plot of The Warden was conceived one evening in May or June 1851; and the book was written between the summer of 1852 and the autumn of 1858. The recent discovery in the Chapter-house strong-room of all the documents and letters relating to the Chapter's side of the case of Whiston versus the Dean and Chapter of Rochester, covering the years 1848-1853, affords an unexpected opportunity of checking the accuracy of Trollope's intuition, for it is possible from these papers to discover how an actual dean and chapter at this date, with the bishop of the diocese as the Cathedral's Visitor, did in fact behave, individually and collectively, in a situation which, today, would inevitably be described as "Trollopian."
The Rev. Robert Whiston, a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, had been appointed Headmaster of the Rochester Cathedral Grammar School in December 1842. The appointment was in the hands of the Dean and Chapter, and at the time both parties had had good reasons to feel happy about the arrangement. It was commonly said of Mr Whiston's immediate predecessor at the Cathedral School that "he had flogged away every boy but one." This was an understatement. When the Rev. D. F. Warner had become Headmaster in 1825 he had inherited a reasonably flourishing school of sixteen boys, all of them Grammar Boys or King's Scholars — boys, that is to say, on the Cathedral's Foundation. By 1881 the number of scholars had dropped to nine. Six years later there were only two boys left in the school, one of them being the Headmaster's son. From the autumn term of 1887 to the spring term of 1838 Master Warner was alone in his glory. He had no successors.
"It was with sadness," Mr George Essell, the Chapter Clerk, was to tell Counsel, "that the Dean and Chapter saw their School without a pupil, and this they more than once expressed to the Headmaster. His only reply was, 'Mr Dean, I am ready to teach, but where are the scholars?' "
In 1840 some carping letters had appeared in the Press. It was vaguely understood in Rochester and in the adjoining Medway towns that the Dean and Chapter had an obligation, under the Statutes of their Cathedral, to maintain a Grammar School at which twenty poor boys would receive a free education and a small yearly stipend. Here then was an educational trust from which the public ought to benefit. The fact that it had been allowed to lapse was another nail in the coffins of the over-rich and over-idle deans and canons, whose conduct and shortcomings were being bitterly attacked in the course of acrimonious debates in the House of Lords in connection with the Dean and Chapter Bill.
In public, the Dean and Chapter of Rochester had blamed competition from other schools in the neighbourhood for the Cathedral Grammar School's collapse — Mr Essell had written a letter to this effect to the Rochester, Chatham and Strood Gazette and Weekly Advertiser, pointing out that the school and its facilities were available, and that it was up to the fathers and guardians of boys of a suitable age and possessed of suitable educational qualifications to take advantage of them. In private, the Chapter had recognised that so long as Mr Warner was Headmaster no parents in their senses would entrust their sons to his care; and they had made some rather futile efforts to get rid of this highly unsatisfactory master. With this end in view they had already presented him to the valuable Chapter living of Hoo St Werburgh. Mr Warner had failed to take the hint, and had continued to cling to his sinecure post and to the house in Minor Canon Row which, following the recent reduction in the number of their minor canons, the Chapter had incautiously handed over to him, the Headmaster's official residence having been condemned on the grounds of age, damp and decrepitude. Finally, in December 1841, Mr Warner had been bribed to resign by the promise of a pension and the use of the house in Minor Canon Row, rent-free, for the rest of his life.
The Chapter had been encouraged to bestir themselves by the fortunate circumstance that an ideal replacement was ready and waiting on their doorstep.
The Rev. Robert Whiston was born in 1808, one of the eleven children of William Whiston, a solicitor who, in 1810, had founded the still flourishing firm of Whiston & Sons at Derby. Robert Whiston had been educated at Repton, and had gone up to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a scholar. He had read classics, had been elected a Fellow of his college in 1888, and in this same year had become Headmaster of a proprietary school in Rochester, the Rochester and Chatham Classical and Mathematical School. For a young man of Whiston's background, circumstances and attainments, schoolmastering had been an almost inevitable choice. His tastes were scholarly and athletic. Although he was prepared to take Holy Orders, and was in fact ordained in 1840, he had no desire to become a parish priest. Either tutoring or, better still, the proprietorship of a school was the obvious course for him to pursue — as it had been for Thomas Arnold, although with Arnold tutoring had been forced on him by his wish to get married. Whiston, a bachelor, had regarded the Proprietary School as a springboard. When he had gained experience and had saved some money he had the ambition, again in the Arnold tradition, to obtain the head- mastership of one of the great public schools.
At first, everything had worked out rather well for him at Rochester. With an unmarried sister to keep house for him he had taken in boarders and had made money out of them; he had got on well with his pupils and had found that he liked teaching; he had gained the reputation of being a severe but good master; and he had made friends in the Rochester Precinct. Dr Robert Stevens, the Dean of Rochester, and the five Rochester Canons, the Rev. and Hon. Frederick Hotham, Dr Matthew Irving, Dr John Griffith, Dr Edward Hawkins, and the Archdeacon, Dr Walker King, had all come to like this huge, good-looking, exuberant, enthusiastic, yet serious-minded and well-read young man who, at dinner parties, had shown a considerable talent as a raconteur and a remarkable gift for recognising and capping quotations from the poets and from the classics.
Then the question of the headmastership of the Cathedral Grammar School had cropped up. What the Chapter had needed, in order to get rid of the taste of Mr Warner and to attract boys to their moribund school, had been a master with a good local reputation — a clergyman, a gentleman and a scholar, who would be prepared to accept the appointment at the comparatively low stipend they were able to offer.
Mr Whiston had seemed exactly to fill the bill. He had recently been ordained. He was a Fellow of Trinity. He had been accepted in Precinct society. He was an extremely competent schoolmaster, and was recognised as such in the Medway towns. And he had another outstanding advantage in the Chapter's eyes. By a fortunate chance the Rochester Statutes not only permitted but even encouraged the presence of "private pupils," over and above the twenty Grammar Boys on the Foundation, at the Cathedral Grammar School. Mr Whiston had let it be known that if the vacant headmastership were offered to him he would close down his own school and transfer his thirty pupils to the School-house in the Precinct. This would serve to prime a pump that had run dry, enable him to accept a fairly low salary as he would be making an income from his own pupils, and attract candidates for places on the Cathedral's Foundation.
From Mr. Whiston's own point of view the proposition had also had its attractions — indeed the first suggestion had come from him. He had already on two occasions applied for a headmastership, and two of the Rochester Canons had given him glowing testimonials. To his surprise and chagrin he had not been selected, and it had occurred to him that, despite his Cambridge Fellowship, the headmastership of a small proprietary school in a provincial town did not cut much ice with trustees or governing bodies. They would pay more attention, he thought, to a candidate who was Headmaster of a Cathedral Grammar School and a member of the Cathedral establishment at Rochester. He had reckoned that after a few years he should be able to obtain an important appointment.
Some hard bargaining had ensued. The School-room in the Precinct had been as old and as dilapidated as the Headmaster's house. Mr Whiston had made it a condition of accepting the post that a new School-room should be built; and the Chapter had reluctantly agreed to spend £800 on putting up a building, comprising one large unpartitioned form-room, on the site of some derelict farm-buildings close to the Cathedral. Mr Whiston had also got his way in the matter of his own salary or stipend, and on the question of the appointment of an Under-master.
By their Statutes, the Dean and Chapter were obliged to appoint a Headmaster and an Under-master to teach the twenty boys on their Foundation. The stipends prescribed in the Statutes, which dated from 1545, were £13 6s 8d a year for the Headmaster, and £6 11s 10d for the Under- master. For long enough it had been recognised that, for the Headmaster at least, this stipulated salary was too low. Mr Warner's immediate predecessor, Dr Griffiths (not to be confused with Canon Griffith), had been given a stipend of £38 6s 8d a year and, in addition, the Chapter had handed over to him £2 13s 4d a year for each of the Grammar Boys attending the school — a highly irregular practice for, by Statute, this was the sum which should have been handed by the Dean and Chapter to each Grammar Boy individually, as constituting his statutory stipend. The Chapter had apparently neither known nor cared what Dr Griffiths, a sound enough Headmaster, had done with these £2 13s 4d's. He had in fact divided the boys' stipends into three parts. He had given each boy 19s, he had given £l 3s 6d to his "usher," and he had kept the balance for himself. He had been obliged to employ an usher because the officially appointed Under-master of the Grammar School who received the statutory Under-master's stipend, the Rev. Mr Alfree, one of the Rochester minor canons, had never done a day's teaching in his life and was understood never to have set foot inside the School-room. It had been an old Rochester custom that this sinecure post should be the perquisite of one of the minor canons.
When, in 1825, Mr Warner had succeeded Dr Griffiths as Headmaster, these curious arrangements had been reviewed, and the Chapter, up to a point, had put matters on a better footing. Mr Warner had been given the same stipend as his predecessor but, most unwisely as events proved, the Chapter had guaranteed him an additional annual sum of £28 13s 4d, irrespective of how many Grammar Boys there might be at the school at any time. To offset this extra expenditure they had decided to give each Grammar Boy a stipend of only £1 a year in place of his statutory £2 13s 4d; but they had taken no steps to correct the anomaly of an Under-master who never taught. As Mr Warner had had so few pupils, he had not needed the services of an usher.
When the terms of his appointment had been discussed, Mr Whiston, who had studied the Statutes with some care, had insisted that matters should be put straight. He had demanded and had obtained a stipend of £150 for himself, and he had stipulated that his future brother-in-law, the Rev. John Lloyd Allan, who had also been a Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge, should be appointed Under- master at a stipend of £100 a year. He had also demanded, and the Chapter had agreed, that each Grammar Boy, when there were any Grammar Boys again at the school, should be paid his full annual statutory stipend of £2 13s 4d.
The Chapter in their turn had been cautious. They had expressly stipulated in the terms of their new Headmaster's appointment that Mr Whiston was to be under "the entire control of the Dean and Chapter, subject to such regulations in every respect as they shall from time to time prescribe"; and he had been informed in writing that he had no claims on a Chapter living, though he might be given one if at some future date he enjoyed "the Chapter's approbation." Mr Whiston, in the event, never received a Chapter living.
It had been January 1844 before the school had reopened in its new premises and with its new Headmaster. A copy of the original prospectus has survived. For the tuition of private pupils in classics, mathematics, writing and arithmetic a fee of £14 per annum was charged. Board in the Headmaster's house, including washing and a single bed, cost £47 5s 0d per annum. Both for private pupils and for Grammar Boys, French, German, drawing and dancing or drill were optional subjects, and were charged as "extras."
In the meantime, since the original Headmaster's house had shared the same fate as the old School-room, the Chapter had offered Mr Whiston yet another of its redundant houses in Minor Canon Row — under the Dean and Chapter Act of 1840 the number of minor canons at Rochester had been reduced from six to four. This house, Mr Whiston had declared, was far too small for his purpose — which was to accommodate boarders, both Grammar Boys whose parents lived at some distance from Rochester, and his own private pupils. Since the Chapter had refused to contemplate spending still more money on building Mr Whiston a house, he had from his own resources raised £4,000 with which to buy a large house adjoining the Precinct called the Old Palace: and he had arranged to lease the house in Minor Canon Row to Mr Allan, the Under-Master — an arrangement which had suited both parties.
The Old Palace had had a curious history, typical perhaps of the eccentricity apparently inseparable from the affairs of the Rochester diocese. In 1674 it had been left by a Mr Francis Head to the then Bishop of Rochester and his successors in order, as Mr Head had explained in his will, that there should be a convenient centre for episcopal entertainment near the Cathedral. The Bishop's Palace was then at Bromley. No Bishop had ever occupied Mr Head's house, which had been let to successive tenants. In 1886 it had passed into the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, from whom Mr Whiston bought it. Today, by a curious turn of events, re-christened Bishopscourt, it has at long last become the official residence of the Bishops of Rochester.
From the point of view of their school, by appointing Mr Whiston the Chapter had obtained an excellent Headmaster. From the point of view of their own future peace of mind they had unwittingly harnessed themselves to a tiger.
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