thereabouts, I began to shoot up, and gave not up growing till I had
attained the middle size and stature of men.

At this school, which at that time was in good reputation, I
profited apace, having then a natural propensity to learning; so
that at the first reading over of my lesson I commonly made myself
master of it; and yet, which is strange to think of, few boys in the
school wore out more birch than I. For though I was never, that I
remember, whipped upon the score of not having my lesson ready, or
of not saying it well, yet being a little busy boy, full of spirit,
of a working head and active hand, I could not easily conform myself
to the grave and sober rules and, as I then thought, severe orders
of the school, but was often playing one waggish prank or other
among my fellow-scholars, which subjected me to correction, so that
I have come under the discipline of the rod twice in a forenoon;
which yet brake no bones.

Had I been continued at this school, and in due time preferred to a
higher, I might in likelihood have been a scholar, for I was
observed to have a genius apt to learn. But my father having, so
soon as the republican government began to settle, accepted the
office of a justice of the peace (which was no way beneficial, but
merely honorary, and every way expensive), and put himself into a
port and course of living agreeably thereunto, and having also
removed my brother from Thame school to Merton College in Oxford,
and entered him there in the highest and most chargeable condition
of a Fellow Commoner, he found it needful to retrench his expenses
elsewhere, the hurt of which fell upon me. For he thereupon took me
from school, to save the charge of maintaining me there; which was
somewhat like plucking green fruit from the tree, and laying it by