There is no evidence, from a roll of schoolboys at Stratford Free Grammar School, about 1564-77, that any given boy attended it; for no roll exists.  Consequently there is no evidence that Will was a pupil.

“In the Appendix to Malone’s Life of Shakespeare will be found two Latin letters, written by alumni of Stratford School contemporary with Shakespeare,” says Mr. Collins. {48a} But though the writers were Stratford boys contemporary with Shakespeare, in later life his associates, as there is no roll of pupils’ names how do we know, the Baconians may ask, that these men were educated at Stratford School?  Why not at Winchester, Eton, St. Paul’s, or anywhere?  Need one reply?

Mr. Collins goes on, in his simple confiding way, to state that “one letter is by Abraham Sturley, afterwards an alderman of Stratford . . . " Pursuing the facts, we find that Sturley wrote in Latin to “Richard Quiney, Shakespeare’s friend,” who, if he could read Sturley’s letter, could read Latin.  Then young Richard Quiney, apparently aged eleven, wrote in Latin to his father.  If young Richard Quiney be the son of Shakespeare’s friend, Richard Quiney, then, of course, his Latin at the age of eleven would only prove that, if he were a schoolboy at Stratford, one Stratford boy could write Latin in the generation following that of Shakespeare.  Thus may reason the Baconians.

Perhaps, however, we may say that if Stratford boys contemporary with Shakspere, in his own rank and known to him, learned Latin, which they retained in manhood, Shakspere, if he went to school with them, may have done as much.

Concerning the school, a Free Grammar School, we know that during Shakespeare’s boyhood the Mastership was not disdained by Walter Roche, perhaps a Fellow of what was then the most progressive College in learning of those at Oxford, namely, Corpus Christi.  That Shakespeare could have been his pupil is uncertain; the dates are rather difficult.  I think it probable that he was not, and we do not know the qualifications of the two or three succeeding Masters.

As to the methods of teaching and the books read at Grammar Schools, abundance of information has been collected.  We know what the use was in one very good school, Ipswich, from 1528; in another in 1611; but as we do not possess any special information about Stratford School, Mr. Greenwood opposes the admission of evidence from other academies.  A man might think that, however much the quality of the teaching varied in various free schools, the nominal curriculum would be fairly uniform.

As to the teacher, a good endowment would be apt to attract a capable man.  What was the endowment of Stratford School?  It was derived from the bequest of Thomas Jolyffe (died 1482), a bequest of lands in Stratford and Dodwell, and before the Reformation the Brethren of the Guild were “to find a priest fit and able in knowledge to teach grammar freely to all scholars coming to him, taking nothing for their teaching . . . " “The Founder’s liberal endowment made it possible to secure an income for the Master by deed.  Under the Reformation, Somerset’s Commission found that the School Master had 10 pounds yearly by patent; the school was well conducted, and was not confiscated.” {50a}