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he King’s School at Tercanbury, to which Philip went
Twhen he was thirteen, prided itself on its antiquity. It
traced its origin to an abbey school, founded before the
Conquest, where the rudiments of learning were taught by
Augustine monks; and, like many another establishment of
this sort, on the destruction of the monasteries it had been
reorganised by the officers of King Henry VIII and thus ac-
quired its name. Since then, pursuing its modest course, it
had given to the sons of the local gentry and of the profes-
sional people of Kent an education sufficient to their needs.
One or two men of letters, beginning with a poet, than
whom only Shakespeare had a more splendid genius, and
ending with a writer of prose whose view of life has affected
profoundly the generation of which Philip was a member,
had gone forth from its gates to achieve fame; it had pro-
duced one or two eminent lawyers, but eminent lawyers are
common, and one or two soldiers of distinction; but during
the three centuries since its separation from the monastic
order it had trained especially men of the church, bishops,
deans, canons, and above all country clergymen: there were
boys in the school whose fathers, grandfathers, great-grand-
fathers, had been educated there and had all been rectors of
parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they came to it
with their minds made up already to be ordained. But there

Of Human Bondage