how noble the ancient words of the supplication which the priest
utters, and to which generations of fresh children and troops of
bygone seniors have cried Amen under those arches!"[6]

Having resolved to found a charity which should provide both for
young and old, Sutton, who had ample reason fully to appreciate the
unprincipled and grasping character of the court, proceeded to take
every precaution that sagacity and ingenuity could suggest to keep his
money secure from the hands of such harpies as Carr and "Steenie,"
and hedge it round with every bulwark possible. Perhaps he consulted
"Jingling Geordie," then planning his own singular scheme,[7] on
the point, and got him to persuade the king, always vain of his
scholarship, that it would well become him to become patron of an
institution having for one of its main objects the education of youth
in sound learning. Be this as it may, the fact is certain that a
degree of royal and other powerful protection was somehow secured
for the institution which for all time prevented its funds from being
diverted to other purposes.

Sutton's bequest of the bulk of his estate to charitable uses was not
unnaturally viewed with strong disapprobation by his nephew, one
Simon Baxter, for whom he had, however, not neglected to provide, who
brought a suit to set aside the will. However, notwithstanding that
he had Bacon for his counsel, he failed to interfere with his uncle's
disposition of his estate; the court holding that the claims of
kinship had been sufficiently recognized.[8]

In the same year, 1614, the institution opened. The rules and orders
for its government may yet be seen, bearing the autograph signature
of Charles I., then prince of Wales. From that time almost every man