Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, and The Beginnings of Secondary School Mathematics

History of Mathematics Education
Nerida F. Ellerton
M.A. (Ken) Clements
Samuel Pepys, Isaac

Newton, James Hodgson,
and the Beginnings
of Secondary School
Mathematics
A History of the Royal Mathematical School
Within Christs Hospital, London 16731868
Series Editors
Nerida F. Ellerton
M. A. (Ken) Clements
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13545

The Royal Mathematical School went through some vicissitudes in its
early days and for a century or more Mathemats were the bully-boys of the
Hospital and the terror of townees, but the R.M.S. inspired both Peter the
Great (with the aid of two lads straight out of the Hospital) and Louis XIV
to set up similar institutions in their own kingdoms, and before long
Mathemats were proving their worth not only in the Royal Navy ... but
also in the Maritime Service of the East India Company and captains of
Bombay Buccaneers. However, the greatest glory of the R.M.S. is in the
history of exploration. A Mathemat surveyed the dividing line between
Virginia and North Carolina, there were Mathematsand the man who
became the greatest Master of the R.M.S.with Cook when he
circumnavigated the world. Mathemats helped to open up the American
West. Mathemats explored the interior of Australia. (p. 22)
Allan, G. A. T., & Morpurgo, J. E. (1984). Christs Hospital. London, UK:
Town & Country Books.
Nerida F. Ellerton M. A. (Ken) Clements
Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton,

James Hodgson, and the Beginnings
of Secondary School Mathematics
A History of the Royal Mathematical School
Within Christs Hospital, London 1673-1868
Foreword by Benjamin Wardhaugh

Nerida F. Ellerton M. A. (Ken) Clements
Department of Mathematics Department of Mathematics
Illinois State University Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois, USA Normal, Illinois, USA
ISSN 2509-9736 ISSN 2509-9744 (electronic)

ISBN 978-3-319-46656-9 ISBN 978-3-319-46657-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
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Foreword
Perhaps its time for the history of mathematics to be re-titled mathematics in the
past. More and more scholars are turning to the history of mathematics not just for
narratives about high-concept discovery and innovationthough well always need those
but also to seek to recover and understand the experiences with respect to both informal and
formal versions of mathematics of a much wider variety of people, across all aspects of the
societies and cultures in which they live.
On the one hand we have studies of mathematics as culture, and work on the visibility
and the importance in general culture of the most creative mathematical developments and
the most high-level technical achievements. On the other hand, greater attention is being paid
to the rich and varied worlds of practitioners and amateurs, teachers and learners. In other
words, there is an emerging history of numeracy, and of how members of society have
identified, developed and drawn on numerical, geometrical, and logical relationships in their
quest not only to survive with dignity but also to become more adept at improving their own
lives and those of others around them. That is as it should be. Doing mathematics and
becoming mathematical were and are part of culture just as much as are reading, writing
and becoming literate. And, as parts of culture they are just as transformative, just as
disruptive and potentially subversive, just as historically rich and interesting.
The launch of Springers series on the history of mathematics education is particularly
to be welcomed. As Ellerton and Clements rightly point out, mathematics educators have
until recently paid little attention to questions of the how did we get here? kind. There is an
urgent need for better understandings of how mathematics education can be and how it has
been: of the variety and the levels of success of different ways of teaching and learning
mathematics, as well as of the historical processes that have left us, ultimately, with math
anxiety and math wars.
Within any history of school mathematics, of mathematics education, or of numeracy in
the United Kingdom, Christs Hospital must have a special place. Since the creation of the
Royal Mathematical School (RMS) as part of the school in 1673, it has been an unignorable
part of the landscape of mathematics education. Its teachersboth the stars and the non-
starsand (some of) its alumni should be part of any story about mathematics and numeracy
in the British Isles: and for that matter in Britains overseas possessions. And the quality and
the usefulness of the education that RMS provided, and the quality of the boys it sent out to
employment at sea, were long a touchstone for the public visibility of mathematical learning
and for debates about its utility.
Ellerton and Clements have already, through their remarkable work on the history of
mathematics education, put permanently on the map the once-forgotten cyphering tradition
and drawn attention to the quantity of archival material and the detail and depth of
information that is available with respect to that tradition. This book is in some ways an
extension of that work: but it is much more as well. By turning their attention to the Royal
Mathematical School they have told an ambitious story which takes us right to the heart of
both historical and modern debates about what it was and what it is to learn mathematics. It
will be widely read and used, and I hope it will inspire more work of similar thoughtfulness
and subtlety on mathematics in the past.
v
vi Foreword, by Benjamin Wardhaugh
If its at last beginning to be accepted that mathematics is part of culture, and the
history of mathematics part of cultural history, books like this one fill an urgent gap in
showing us what mathematics-as-culture actually consisted of. How mathematics was
assimilated and passed on, what difference it made. What mathematics, where, and for
whom? If the RMS redefined and extended the concept of school mathematics, Ellerton and
Clements, through their study of that institution, have redefined and extended the concept of
mathematical history.
Benjamin Wardhaugh July 2016

All Souls College
The University of Oxford
Contents
Foreword (by Benjamin Wardhaugh)................................................................................... v

Contents ................................................................................................................................. vii
List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... x
List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... xii
Overall Book Abstract and Individual Abstracts for the Ten Chapters......................... xiii
Preface to the Series ............................................................................................................. xix
Preface to the Book ................................................................................................................ xxi
1 Mathematics in the Christs Hospital Curriculum Before 1673......................................... 1

In the Beginning: Christs Hospital 15521673 ........................................................................1
The Emergence of Christs Hospital as a School for the Poor, but with Elite
Tendencies .............................................................................................................................3
Six Main Research Questions Addressed in this Book..............................................................7
The Main Arguments Presented in this Book ............................................................................8
2 Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic: Expanding the Domain of School

Mathematics ........................................................................................................................... 13
Accounts of How and Why the Royal Mathematical School was Established
at Christs Hospital, London, in 1673 ..................................................................................15
RMSs Challenge .....................................................................................................................20
3 Stars in the RMS Firmament 16731798 ............................................................................. 25

The Guiding Star: Samuel Pepys .............................................................................................27
The Morning Star: Jonas Moore ..............................................................................................29
An Influential Star: Christopher Wren.....................................................................................32
An Unusual Star: Robert Hooke ..............................................................................................34
The Most Commanding Star: Isaac Newton ............................................................................36
The Star-Finder: John Flamsteed .............................................................................................39
The Shooting Star: Edmond Halley .........................................................................................42
The Falling Star: The Outsider, Humfrey Ditton .................................................................44
The Shining Star: James Hodgson ...........................................................................................47
The Supporting Star: John Robertson ......................................................................................50
The Most Celebrated Star: William Wales ..............................................................................52
The Contribution of RMS to the History of School Mathematics, Seen
from an International Perspective ........................................................................................54
vii
viii Contents
4 Years of Struggle for RMS 16731708 ................................................................................. 61

The RMS Model and Mathematics for the People ..................................................................61
Pepyss Reactions to RMSs Early Difficulties of the RMS ...................................................63
Pepys Broadens his Attack on the Quality of Education at Christs Hospital .........................68
The RMS Under Peter Perkins, Robert Wood and Edward Paget ...........................................70
Mathematics War: Samuel Newton, RMS Master, Versus Trinity
House Examiners .................................................................................................................72
Reinterpreting Educational Politics Associated with the Early Years of RMS .......................78
The Influence of Christs Hospital on the Development of Mathematics Education
in England and in Other Nations 16731700.......................................................................82
Comparative Mathematics Education: Challenges and Pitfalls ...............................................85
5 Developments in RMS Curricula 16731798 ..................................................................... 89

The Struggle to Define a Satisfactory Intended Curriculum ...................................................90
The Cyphering Tradition and the Implemented Curriculum ...................................................96
Quality Assurance and the Received Curriculum ..................................................................113
6 RMS Comes of Age 17091755: The Hodgson Era .......................................................... 121

RMS Facing its Future in 1709 ..............................................................................................121
James Hodgson Clears the Decks ..........................................................................................122
Hodgsons (1723) A System of the Mathematics ...................................................................130
Popularity of the RMS Program in the Early 1720s ..............................................................136
Other Programs Based on the RMS Model for Navigation Education ..................................136
Hodgsons Retreat into Research, Writing and Publishing 17231755 ................................138
James Hodgson and the History of School Mathematics ......................................................141
7 William Wales: RMS Master 17761798 ......................................................................... 145

RMS in 1776, when William Wales was Appointed Master .................................................145
William Waless Methods of Teaching .................................................................................153
William Wales, William Arthur Trollope, Ernest Pearce, and the Distortion
of the History of the Royal Mathematical School .............................................................155
Concluding Comments ..........................................................................................................161
8 Redefining School Mathematics at Christs Hospital 18001868 ................................... 165
School Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic in British Higher-Level Schools
After 1800 ..........................................................................................................................165
William Websters Evidence Before the Taunton Royal Commission .................................168
RMSs Implemented and Received Curriculum 18001868 .................................................183
Christs Hospital is a Thing Without Parallel in the Country ............................................188
Contents ix
9 An Appropriate Theoretical Lens: Lag Time .................................................................. 193

A New Era in School Mathematics........................................................................................193
Lag Time and Curriculum Development in School Mathematics .........................................195
Case 1: Isaac Newtons Attempt, in 1694, to Modernize the RMS Curriculum ...................196
Case 2: Humfrey Dittons Attempt, in 1709, to Introduce a Rigorous
Algebra Component into the Curriculum of his New Mathematical School .....................200
Case 3: James Hodgsons Inclusion of Fluxions in his RMS Curriculum.............................201
Implications of Lag-Time Theory from the Three Case Studies ...........................................205
Concluding Comments ..........................................................................................................208
10 The Importance of the Royal Mathematical School in the History
of School Mathematics ........................................................................................................ 211
Answering the Research Questions .......................................................................................212
Question 1: Why was RMS Established? ..............................................................................213
Question 2: What Factors Need to be Taken into Account when Evaluating
Samuel Pepyss Work with Respect to RMS? ...................................................................214
Question 3: Were Isaac Newtons Efforts to establish a Suitable RMS
Curriculum Successful? .....................................................................................................216
Question 4: To what Extent is it True that Most of the RMS Masters During
the First 125 Years of RMSs Existence Were Unsuccessful? ..........................................217
Question 5: What was the Role of Cyphering in the RMS Implemented
Curriculum? .......................................................................................................................219
Question 6: Did RMS Become a Prototype for Mathematics for the People? ...................220
Limitations of the Research, and Questions for Further Research ........................................223
Postscript................................................................................................................................226
Short Biographies of the Authors ............................................................................................. 233

Index of Appendices ............................................................................................................... 235
Appendix A: Samuel Pepyss 1677 List of Defects in RMS, and Associated
Remedies.......................................................................................................... 237
Appendix B: Isaac Newtons Comments, in 1694, on the RMS Curriculum ........................247
Appendix C: William Websters Evidence Before the Taunton Royal Commission,
1865 ..................................................................................................................259
Appendix D: The Intended Christs Hospital Mathematics Curriculum
in the Mid-1860s .............................................................................................. 271
Appendix E: Responding to Reviewers .................................................................................281
Appendix F: James Hodgsons (1706) Preface to his Textbook on Navigation ....................291
Combined List of References ................................................................................................... 295

Author Index .............................................................................................................................. 311
Subject Index ............................................................................................................................. 317
List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Edward VI, presenting the charter of the Hospital to the Corporation
of London (from Historical and Descriptive Notice of Christs Hospital,
November 21, 1840, p. 1). ................................................................................... 2
Figure 2.1 The day the Dutch burnt our boats (from History Today, August
1973). ................................................................................................................. 14
Figure 2.2 Image of Christs Hospital and Christ Church (right foreground),
depicting schools reconstruction, under the design of Christopher
Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, after the Great Fire of London of 1666. ....... 17
Figure 3.1 Samuel Pepys in 1666. Pepys became Secretary to the Admiralty
under King Charles II and King James II. ......................................................... 27
Figure 3.2 Jonas Moore, around 1660. ............................................................................... 30
Figure 3.3 Portrait of Christopher Wren (c. 1690), by John Closterman. .......................... 33
Figure 3.4 Portrait of Isaac Newton, by Godfrey Kneller, 1702. ....................................... 39
Figure 3.5 Portrait of the Reverend John Flamsteed (16461719), by John Simon
(1719) after Thomas Gibson (1712). ................................................................. 40
Figure 3.6 Portrait of Edmond Halley, c. 1687, by Thomas Murray. ................................. 43
Figure 3.7 Title page, Humphrey Dittons (1705). The General Laws
of Nature and Motion. ....................................................................................... 45
Figure 3.8 Portrait of James Hodgson (16781755) by George White,
after Thomas Gibson, c. 1720. .......................................................................... 48
Figure 3.9 Image of William Wales on an official 1974 New Hebrides stamp. ................. 53
Figure 4.1 Charles II giving an audience at Christs Hospital. ........................................... 69
Figure 4.2 A nineteenth-century Grecian (senior Grammar School student)
delivering the annual oration within the Great Hall at Christs Hospital
(Illustrated London News, October 1st, 1842, p. 1). ......................................... 70
Figure 4.3 Peter Perkins, RMS master, 16781680. This 1682 image
is by Jan Drapentier, after an unknown artist. ................................................... 71
Figure 5.1 Coasting along the shore ...: Case 2 for oblique sailing. ............................. 106
Figure 5.2 Case the 2nd, on oblique sailing, in John Coxs (1723)
navigation cyphering book. ............................................................................. 107
Figure 5.3 A page from James Battertons (1718) navigation cyphering book................. 108
Figure 5.4 Another page from James Battertons (1718) navigation
cyphering book. ............................................................................................... 109
Figure 5.5 Navigation cyphering books by James Dobson (1756), Edmund
Ensor (1852), and James Batterton (1718). ..................................................... 110
Figure 5.6 Given 1 declination, 1 altitude, 2 delineation, 2 altitude, time. Find
the rest (from Charles Pages (1826) cyphering book). ................................ 112
x
xi
Figure 5.7 Queen Victoria inspecting RMS boys navigation cyphering books
(reproduced from The Illustrated London News, June 8, 1843, p. 19). ........... 113
Figure 6.1 Page 10 from Dittons (1709) appendix. ......................................................... 127
Figure 6.2 Page 109 from Dittons (1709) appendix. This page was actually
prepared by Edward Paget, a former RMS master. ......................................... 128
Figure 6.3 Pythagorass Theorem as shown in Hodgson (1723), Volume 1,
page 19. ........................................................................................................... 132
Figure 6.4 Hodgsons (1723) treatment of an important circle theorem
(page 27). ......................................................................................................... 133
Figure 6.5 Hodgsons introduction to sines, tangents and secants. .................................. 134
Figure 6.6 Finding the sine of any arch, its length being given (from Hodgson,
1723, Volume 1, p. 69). ................................................................................... 135
Figure 8.1 Double altitude calculations, using logarithms, in H. J. C. Andrews
(1836) navigation cyphering book. ................................................................. 185
Figure 8.2 Double altitude calculations, using logarithms, in Richard Murdoch
Robertsons (1858) navigation cyphering book. ............................................. 187
Figure 9.1 Different ways of seeing problems or situations that might relate
to mathematics (from Ellerton & Clements, 2014, p. 321). ............................ 195
Figure 9.2 Pages 6466 of Volume 1 of James Hodgsons (1723) textbook
for his RMS program. ...................................................................................... 202
List of Tables
Table 1.1 Scholarships Available to Christs Hospital Students to Attend

the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford, 15521673
(from Potts, 1855) ................................................................................................ 5
Table 3.1 Summary of 10 Stars in the RMS Firmament, and also of the Influence
of Humfrey Ditton .............................................................................................. 26
Table 4.1 Samuel Pepyss Table Showing the Age at which it was Proposed
a Future RMS Student Would Enter Christs Hospital, the Time
he Would Stay in a Particular School, and the Age at Which he Would
be Fitted to be Removed from Each School (from Kirk, 1935, p. 9) ................. 64
Table 8.1 Day-by-Day Mathematics Classes for Grecians and Deputy Grecians
Under the Rev. T. J. Potter, M.A., Head Mathematical Master
in 1866 (Great Britain, 1868a, p. 446) ............................................................. 171
Table 8.2 The Mathematical Studies of Naval Classes (Named Orders)
at Christs Hospital During the Quarter Commencing January 18, 1866
(Great Britain, 1868a, p. 447) .......................................................................... 173
Table 8.3 Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Classes or Forms Named
Lower Mathematical School (at Christs Hospital), Under the Rev.
H. C. Bowker, B. A., Second Mathematical Master, During
the Quarter Commencing January18, 1866 (Great Britain, 1868a,
p. 449)............................................................................................................... 178
Appendix D includes 10 tables, taken from:
Great Britain (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission Vol. VII, General reports
of the Assistant Commissioners (pp. 437454). London, UK: Author. ........... 271
xii
Overall Book Abstract, and Individual Abstracts
for the Ten Chapters of the Book
Overall Abstract
This book offers a history, for the period 16731868, of the Royal Mathematical
School (RMS) at Christs Hospital in London. The history has been consciously written from
the perspective of the international history of school mathematics. Our analyses of the
existing literature, of archival data, and our interpretations of those analyses, led us to
conclude that RMS was the worlds first major school to teach mathematics-beyond-
arithmetic to teenage children as a continuous part of its overall program.
The following six research questions receive special attention:
1. Why was RMS established in 1673?
2. What factors need to be taken into account when evaluating Samuel Pepyss work
with respect to RMS?
3. Were Isaac Newtons efforts to establish a suitable RMS curriculum successful?
4. To what extent is it true that most of the RMS masters during the first 125 years of
RMSs existence were unsuccessful?
5. What was the role of cyphering in RMSs implemented curriculum?
6. Is it true that RMS became a prototype for Mathematics for the People?
Throughout the book we examine issues associated with those six questions through the lens
of a lag-time theoretical perspective. Our analyses were not constrained by these questions,
however, with other issues often being explored.
The best-known histories of Christs Hospital are those written by William Trollope
and Ernest H. Pearce, in 1834 and 1901, respectively. Although both Trollope and Pearce
paid some attention to the work and influence of RMS within the school, they wrote from the
perspective of the Grammar School (within Christs Hospital), and did not comment on the
importance of RMS so far as the international history of school mathematics is concerned.
RMS was established in 1673, largely through the work and influence of Christs
Hospital personnel, and the idea was supported by Samuel Pepys, who was Secretary of the
Admiralty Commission at that time. During its first 35 years RMS struggled to offer an
effective program in mathematics educationmainly because its curriculum was too difficult
for teenage children but also because too little time was allowed in the school program for
the teaching and learning of mathematics and navigation to RMS students. And, although
experts such as Isaac Newton were consulted on curricular and staffing matters, the advice
given by the experts was often less than satisfactory. Newton, for example, seriously
overestimated the mathematical capacities of RMS students. As a result of the RMS
curriculum being so difficult, and of insufficient time being allowed for the study of
mathematics and navigation (and too much time for the study of Latin), the early RMS
masters could not cope with the demands of their position. Not surprisingly, they were
blamed for a state of affairs which was only partly of their own making.
In Chapter 6 it is argued that the situation changed in 1709, with the appointment of
James Hodgson as RMS master. Hodgson, who held the position for 46 years, was a fine
teacher and RMS thrived for much of his time as master. By the middle of the eighteenth
xiii
xiv Abstracts
century Christs Hospital had come to be regarded as having the best mathematics program
of any school in Great Britain. The high reputation gained by RMS during its first century of
existence was not mentioned by Trollope and Pearcewho both concentrated on the
difficulties experienced by early RMS masters and glorified the work of William Wales, the
RMS master between 1776 and 1798. Our analyses suggest that the extent and quality of
Waless contributions were greatly exaggerated by both Trollope and Pearce.
The groundbreaking developments in school mathematics at Christs Hospital during
the first 125 years of RMSs existence were not sustained, and Chapter 8 of this book reveals
that during the period 18001868 school mathematics at Christs Hospital gradually lost its
reputation as an outstanding school so far as mathematics was concerned. By the time of the
Taunton Royal Commission, in the 1860s, the Mathematics Department at Christs Hospital
was just one of many high-level British schools offering a strong academic preparation in
mathematics for students who wished to proceed to university studies.
From a historiographical perspective, this book emphasizes how the history of a part of
a schoolthe RMS, so far as this book is concernedcan be portrayed in very different
ways, depending on the vantage point from which the history is written. In this book we have
written the history of RMS within Christs Hospital during the period 16731868 from the
vantage point of international developments in school mathematics educationby contrast,
Trollope and Pearce viewed the history of RMS from a Grammar School perspective. Our
story is quite different from theirs.
Individual Chapter Abstracts

Chapter 1: Mathematics in the Christs Hospital Curriculum Before 1673
Abstract: This chapter considers the place of mathematics in the curriculum at Christs
Hospital, a school in central London, during the period from the establishment of the school
in 1552, to 1673, when the Royal Mathematical School began within the school. Although
there is no known extant manuscript evidence it is almost certain that elementary arithmetic
was the only mathematics taught at the school during those early years, and that students
were introduced to that subject by Writing School masters who adopted classroom
organizational approaches consistent with the cyphering tradition. There would have been an
emphasis on numeration and the four operations, and on calculations involving money and
weights and measures, with the intention of preparing students for apprenticeships as clerks.
The chapter also draws attention to the influence of the Grammar School within Christs
Hospital. Grammar School masters taught Latin and Greek to children deemed to be
capable, and there was an expectation that some would win scholarships to the University
of Cambridge or to the University of Oxfordwhere they would seek to become qualified
lawyers or clergymen within the Church of England. When, in 1673, the Royal Mathematical
School was created, Samuel Pepys and others assumed that mathematics and navigation
studies would be at the pinnacle of academic pursuits within Christs Hospital, but that
assumption ran counter to a school ethos which had developed and matured between 1552
and 1673. The chapter concludes with a summary of six research questions for which
answers will be sought in this book, as well as summaries of each of the ten chapters.
Abstracts xv
Chapter 2: Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic: Expanding the Domain of School

Mathematics
Abstract: This chapter summarizes and analyzes educational, financial, military, and
political contexts associated with a sequence of events which led to the creation, in 1673, of
the Royal Mathematical School (RMS) within a school, Christs Hospital, which had existed
for more than 120 years. The creation of RMS, with its strong emphasis on mathematics and
navigation education, represented a major shift in the schools curriculum and mission. The
wisdom of the decision to establish RMS as a specialist mathematics/navigation education
entity with a rigorous intended mathematics curriculum is questionedgiven that there was
no guarantee that suitability qualified teachers, with proven experience in teaching
mathematics beyond arithmetic to 12- to 16-year-olds, would be available.
Chapter 3: Stars in the RMS Firmament 16731798

Abstract: This chapter identifies a firmament of 10 RMS starscomprising Samuel Pepys,
Jonas Moore, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, John Flamsteed, Edmond
Halley, James Hodgson, John Robertson, and William Wales. It also identifies an eleventh
person, Humfrey Dittona mathematics master at Christs Hospital between 1706 and
1715as someone who had an important influence on the future of RMS. The 10 stars
illuminated the educational world within the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital
at various times during the 125-year period 16731798. Not all the stars shone at the same
time, with the first 30 years of RMSs existence being the time when more of the stars were
shining together than at any other time. After briefly considering peculiar characteristics of
each of the stars, and of Humfrey Ditton, their contributions to RMSs development are
considered. It is concluded that the greatest, most positive, contribution came from James
Hodgson, RMS master between 1709 and 1755.
Chapter 4: Years of Struggle for RMS 16731708

Abstract: The decision in the early 1670s to create a specialist mathematics/navigation
training program within a school whose buildings had been badly damaged by the Great Fire
of London was both creative and brave. It was creative because it recognized that Christs
Hospital could provide a steady source of boys for the kind of advanced training needed by
apprentices in the Royal Navy or in the merchant marine. It was brave because such a
scheme had never previously been tried anywhere in the world. This chapter tells of the
teething troubles that Samuel Pepys, Jonas Moore, and others, experienced in developing the
RMS curriculum and its associated teaching and learning program. It is argued that the
program designed by Pepys and Moore was nave in that the level of mathematics which it
required of students was too high for 12- to 16-year-old boys who had virtually no formal
education beyond elementary reading, writing, and cyphering.
Chapter 5: Developments in RMS Curricula 16731798

Abstract: Modern concepts of intended curriculum, implemented curriculum, and
received curriculum are used in an analysis of RMS curriculum development during the
xvi Abstracts
period 16731798. Although early RMS intended curricula were framed in terms of topics
deemed to be appropriate for prospective navigators, RMS masters implemented a
curriculum by which the boys prepared cyphering books which summarized what they were
studying. From the outset the received curriculumwhat the students experienced and
learned from the implemented curriculawas assessed by external examiners who visited
Christs Hospital from time to time, and by experienced and reputable navigators associated
with Trinity House, an independent, semi-government naval authority. Analysis reveals that
both the RMS students and their masters struggled to cope with unrealistic curricular
expectations, with the students being expected to learn too much, too quickly. When, during
the period 16731709, the RMS program was seen to be failing, it was the masters who were
blamed.
Chapter 6: RMS Comes of Age 17091755: The Hodgson Era

Abstract: Early in 1709 James Hodgson was appointed master of RMS, and he remained in
that position until his death in 1755. The Hodgson era was a time when, against the odds,
Christs Hospital was able to provide a regular supply of graduates ready for gainful
apprenticeship and service in the Royal Navy or the merchant marine. This success was
especially evident in the early years of Hodgsons tenure as a result of his inspirational
teaching and strong knowledge of both mathematics and navigation. Somehow, too,
Hodgson, Fellow of the Royal Society, always managed to find time to be an able researcher,
and he was a regular contributor to the Royal Societys journal. In the early 1720s he
managed to write and have published a massive two-volume textbook, written especially for
RMS students, which took account of all aspects of the RMS program. Between 1748 and
1755 an ageing Hodgson was assisted in RMS work by John Robertson, and, in 1755
Robertson succeeded Hodgson as RMS master. This chapter will draw attention to the
serious lack of attention given to the Hodgson era by those who have written histories of
Christs Hospital. It is argued that this has led to a distortion of the history and significance
of the influence of RMS in the eighteenth century.
Chapter 7: William Wales: RMS Master 17761798

Abstract: William Wales was RMS master from 1776 to 1798. At the time of his
appointment he was obviously full of the practical navigation experience that might be
expected of anyone accepting the responsibility of preparing boys to take up sea-related
apprenticeships. Between August 1768 and September 1769, he had coped with the wilds,
and the bitter cold, of Hudson Bay, in Canada, on a successful Royal Society mission to
observe a transit of the planet Venus. Then, between 1772 and 1775, he had accompanied
Captain James Cook on Cooks second major journey. During his time at Christs Hospital,
Wales developed a more positive attitude towards the work of the Grammar School than had
previous RMS masters, and Trollope and Pearce claimed that he succeeded in stabilizing
RMS operations. Both Trollope and Pearce lauded Wales as the greatest of the RMS masters,
but in this chapter that assessment of Waless performance as RMS master is problematized.
Abstracts xvii
Chapter 8: Redefining School Mathematics at Christs Hospital 18001868

Abstract: During the period 18001868 there was a large increase in the number of pupils at
Christs Hospital who studied mathematics beyond arithmetic. The school began to offer
more mathematics to more students largely because senior Grammar School students needed
to become better acquainted with mathematics if they were to have a chance of gaining
honours degrees at the University of Cambridge. The RMS continued to exist, and its
students continued to follow the traditional RMS curriculum, but with other elite schools
increasingly embracing mathematics beyond arithmetic, it was not long before Christs
Hospital lost its reputation as having the best school mathematics program in the nation. This
chapter explores factors which contributed to the widespread changes in school mathematics
at Christs Hospital during the period by analyzing answers that the Reverend William
Websterthe long-serving head of the Mathematical Schoolgave, in 1865, to questions
asked of him when he appeared before the Taunton Royal Commissioners.
Chapter 9: An Appropriate Theoretical Lens: Lag Time

Abstract: Lag time is defined as the amount of time between when a mathematical
development (such as Newtons fluxions) was first made known and when that development
came to be normally studied as part of the implemented mathematics curriculum in schools.
In preparing this book we identified and analyzed pertinent archival and other data and then
recognized that our interpretations of those data were consistent with lag-time theory. From
the beginning of RMS, in 1673, logarithms and trigonometry were incorporated into the RMS
curriculum, at a time when school children, elsewhere, were rarely expected to grapple with
such topics. Edward Paget (in 1693) and Humfrey Ditton (in 1709) attempted to introduce
sophisticated algebraic principles into the RMS curriculum, and in 1694 Isaac Newton
attempted to persuade Christs Hospital authorities to include the theory of mechanics. James
Hodgson, in his 1723 textbook which was especially designed for the RMS program, made
use of fluxions, which had only been made known, by Isaac Newton, in 1693. We conclude
that anyone proposing to introduce topics based on recent mathematical developments into
school mathematical curricula needs to take into account not only existing school cultures but
also whether prospective learners will be cognitively ready to learn the new ideas.
Chapter 10: The Importance of the Royal Mathematical School in the History of
School Mathematics
Abstract: This final chapter answers the following six research questions stated towards the
end of the first chapter:
4. To what extent is it true that most of the RMS masters were unsuccessful during the
first 125 years of RMSs existence?
xviii Abstracts

While carrying out the research for this book we came to recognize that authors of
several general histories of Christs Hospital tended to assess the effectiveness of RMS on
the basis of whether they thought it assisted, or impeded, the work of the Grammar School
within the school. A consequence of viewing the history of RMS from that vantage point was
that William Wales was glorified as the most successful RMS master. In this book, however,
the quality of Waless work within RMS has been scrutinized, and it has been argued that
James Hodgson, and not Wales, was the most successful of the RMS masters. Clifford Jones
shares our view that, although Wales was an effective RMS master, the quality of his
work at Christs Hospital seems to have been exaggerated. We have viewed RMS from a
history-of-school-mathematics perspective, and from that vantage point have concluded that
it was the RMS adventure which showed the world that a school mathematics curriculum
embracing logarithms, algebra, trigonometry, and practical, navigation-related, problem
solving, could be offered, usefully, to teenage children. Hence, we have claimed that Christs
Hospital, largely through Samuel Pepys, Jonas Moore, Isaac Newton, and James Hodgson,
redefined and extended the concept of school mathematics. The chapter closes with a
discussion of limitations of the research, and how a consideration of those limitations draws
attention to various questions which need to be the subject of further research.
Preface to the Series
The first books in Springers series on the history of mathematics education are being
published in 2016. From the outset it was decided that the series would comprise scholarly
works on a wide variety of themes, prepared by authors from around the world. We expect
that authors contributing to the series will go beyond top-down approaches to history, so that
emphasis will be placed on the learning, teaching, assessment and wider cultural and societal
issues associated with schools (at all levels), with adults and, more generally, with the roles
of mathematics within various societies. In the past, scholarly treatises on the history of
mathematics education have featured strong Eurocentric/American emphasesmainly
because most researchers in the field were scholars based in European or North or South
American colleges or universities. It is hoped that the books in the new series will be
prepared by writers from all parts of the world.
In addition to generating texts on the history of mathematics education written by
authors in various nations, an important aim of the series will be to develop and report
syntheses of historical research that have already been carried out in different parts of the
world with respect to important themes in mathematics educationlike, for example,
Historical Perspectives on how Language Factors Influence Mathematics Teaching and
Learning, and Historically Important Theories Which Have Influenced the Learning and
Teaching of Mathematics.
The mission for the series can be summarized as:
To make available to scholars and interested persons throughout the world
the fruits of outstanding research into the history of mathematics education;
To provide historical syntheses of comparative research on important themes
in mathematics education; and
To establish greater interest in the history of mathematics education.
We hope that the series will provide a multi-layered canvas portraying the rich details
of mathematics education from the past, while at the same time presenting historical insights
that can support the future. This is a canvas which can never be complete, for todays
mathematics education becomes history for tomorrow. A single snapshot of mathematics
education today is, by contrast with this canvas, flat and unidimensionala mere pixel in a
detailed image. We encourage readers both to explore and to contribute to the detailed image
which is beginning to take shape on the canvas for this series.
Nerida F. Ellerton
M. A. (Ken) Clements
August, 2016
xix
Preface to the Book
This book is about the creation and subsequent influence of the mathematics
department within Christs Hospital, a school which was established in central London in
1552, 465 years ago (Manzione, 1995). The school still exists, but is now located at
Horsham, about 47 miles south of its original location. We decided to study intensively the
early history of school mathematics at Christs Hospital because our research suggested that
it was in that school that the modern idea of secondary school mathematics for all had its
beginnings.
Although we believe that the findings of the research described and summarized in this
book have confirmed the view that modern secondary school mathematics for all began at
Christs Hospital, we recognize that that claim is likely to be contested. We shall be pleased
to read serious counter-commentaries which not only take full account of the analyses of data
and interpretations presented in this book, but also report and analyze, carefully and fully,
data which have not been taken into account in the analyses we present in this book.
This book appears as part of Springers history of mathematics education seriesfor
which we (Ellerton and Clements) have overall editorial responsibility. Our aim for the series
is to generate a scholarly body of literature on the history of mathematics education,
especially the history of school mathematics. Mathematicians have always been interested in
the history of mathematics but, until recently, mathematics educators have paid little
attention to the history of school mathematics. Yet, today vast amounts of money and time
are being spent on servicing school mathematics in all parts of the world, and there is much
debateoften bitter debateabout issues associated with school mathematics curricula,
mathematics teaching methods, assessment and reporting of mathematical learning,
mathematics teacher education (both pre-service and professional development), etc. There is
also much discussion on the roles that governments should play in framing school
mathematics, and on the possibility, and desirability, of internationalizing curricula and
assessment. There is an obvious and urgent need to develop well-researched historical
perspectives on these and many other related key issues.
School mathematics is very different now from what it was 200 years ago. In the early
1800s most children in most countries rarely attended formal schools. Of those who did,
most did not study any mathematics beyond elementary arithmetic. Very few school teachers
stood at the front of a room and taught whole classes, and many students, even those
studying mathematics, did not own a mathematics textbook. Written examinations of any
kind were not used. Most teachers of mathematics did not have formal qualifications in
mathematics (Clements, Keitel, Bishop, Kilpatrick, & Leung, 2013; Ellerton & Clements,
2014). At the beginning of the nineteenth century less than 1 percent of all the worlds
children learned how to add, subtract, multiply or divide common fractions or decimal
fractions while they were at school. An even smaller proportion studied logarithms, or
geometry, or algebra, or trigonometry (Clements & Ellerton, 2015). We believe that before
one can constructively examine and interpret modern twenty-first-century developments one
needs to know more about the situations which prevailed before those developments
occurred.
The relatively few scholars who have given serious attention to the history of school
mathematics have tended to do so from top-down, largely Eurocentric, and high-
xxi
xxii Preface
mathematical vantage points. The emphasis has been on how curricula and textbooks in post-
elementary school mathematics were passed downwards from universities and collegesand
especially from leading institutions located in Europe and in North America. The role of
textbooks in the history of secondary school mathematics has been much emphasized, and
efforts by well-known European mathematicians who sought to improve school mathematics
have tended to be identified.
Results of TIMSS, PISA, and other international comparative studies in the second half
of the twentieth century suggested that the world might have something to learn about the
history of school mathematics curricula and assessment, and about the history of the teaching
and learning of mathematics, from data generated by books and manuscripts emanating from
countries in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Middle East. In this new Springer series a
conscious effort will be made to take advantage of the research of knowledgeable scholars in
nations such as Australia, China, Ethiopia, Finland, India, Iran, Japan, Korea, New Zealand,
Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore and South Africaalthough, of course, well-
credentialed researchers from Europe and America will not be overlooked.
How does the present book fit into a series which aims to do what we have just
outlined? Well, it was at Christs Hospital, in 1673, that the study of mathematics beyond
elementary arithmetic was first offered to children other than the privileged few. And,
because, for the next 200 years, graduates of the Royal Mathematical School at Christs
Hospital would be scattered across the world, especially into British colonies, the influence
of the Christs Hospital mathematics program on the growth of the concept and influence of
school mathematics in many nations around the world was profound.
We wish to thank librarians, archivists and the staff at the British Library, Guildhall
Library, London Metropolitan Archives, the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime
Museum at Greenwich, the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, the Cambridge
University Library, the Pepys Library at Magdalene College within the University of
Cambridge, the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, the
Butler Library at Columbia University, New York, the Clements Library at the University of
Michigan, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Library of Congress (in
Washington DC), the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the
Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, the Special
Collections Research Center in the Swem Library at the College of William and Mary and
the Rockefeller Library (both in Williamsburg, Virginia), the New York Public Library, the
State Library of Victoria (Australia), and the Milner Library at Illinois State University, for
locating relevant manuscripts, artefacts, and books for us. We also visited Christs
Hospitalnow located at Horsham, 47 miles south of central Londonwhere we examined
artefacts relating to matters about which we have written in this book.
We feel deeply honored that Dr Benjamin Wardhaugh, of All Souls College, within the
University of Oxford, agreed to write the foreword to this book. Benjamin has written much
on the history of mathematics and of mathematics education, and in December 2014 and
December 2015 we were privileged to speak at high-level conferences organized by
Benjamin and held at All Souls College. Our encounters with Benjamin and with the other
scholars who attended those conferences certainly helped us to define, refine, and extend our
knowledge and understandings of the history of school mathematics in the United Kingdom.
In addition, we would like to thank Dr George Seelinger, the Head of the Mathematics
Preface xxiii
Department at Illinois State University (in which we both work), for encouraging us in our
research endeavours.
We also wish to thank Clifford Jones and Ken Mansell, volunteers in the Christs
Hospital Museum, who took time to answer questions that we asked of them. Cliffords 350-
page book on the history of the Royal Mathematical School (RMS) at Christs Hospital
appeared in December 2015 (Jones, 2015). When we started writing this present book we
were not aware that Clifford Jones was writing a history of RMS. We purchased Cliffords
book as soon as we became aware it had been published, and have profited from reading it.
There are differences between the emphases in Cliffords book and ours: Cliffords
tells the story of RMS from a school perspective, and this present work is written from the
perspective of the international history of school mathematics. We do not accept Cliffords
contention that Samuel Pepys did not have much to do with the creation of RMS. Another
important difference is that, unlike Clifford, we have emphasized that from RMSs
beginnings, the cyphering tradition had a strong influence on how RMS students were
expected to learn. Despite such differences we are confident that readers will find the two
accounts highly complementary.
After finishing our writing for this book we began to reflect on who might be especially
interested in what we have written. Obviously, Clifford Jones will be, as will many old-Blues
within the Christs Hospital community. We want to assure Clifford and the old-Blues who
read this book that we have developed a genuine admiration for what the school stands for
now, and what it has stood for over the centuries.
The world of publishing has changed considerably over the past few decades, and that
has had an impact on how we have written this book. In the past, authors could assume that a
whole book, or at least quite a few chapters in it, would be read by interested persons. But
now, e-books and individual chapters of a book in digital form are readily available, and
from the outset we recognized that that should affect how we would go about writing
individual chapters. Thus, for example, a careful reader of this book might notice that
sometimes points made in earlier chapters are repeated later in the book. Obviously, because
readers may want access to just one of the chapters in the book, it made sense for us to repeat
material covered in earlier chapters. We have attempted to limit such repetition to cases
where what is being repeated represents essential knowledge if the present chapter is to be
understood as a stand-alone document. Another sign of the times is that there is a reference
list at the end of each chapter, and a composite reference list after all 10 chapters have been
presented. The reason for that is simple: readers who have access to just one chapter are
likely to want to have access to a fully documented statement setting out the works to which
reference is made in the chapter.
We hope that many historians of education, especially those interested in the history of
school mathematics, find this book to be worthy of their attention. There are strong political
and educational differences and undercurrents within that community of scholars, and
undoubtedly some Continental researchers will disagree with our claim that the beginnings of
modern secondary-school mathematics were to be found at Christs Hospital. Although we
also expect reactions to our emphasis on the importance of the cyphering tradition within the
Royal Mathematical School, we would wish to add that until recently very little had been
written about that tradition.
xxiv Preface
References
Clements, M. A., & Ellerton, N. F. (2015). Thomas Jefferson and his decimals 17751810:
Neglected years in the history of U.S. school mathematics. New York, NY: Springer.
Clements, M. A., Keitel, C., Bishop, A. J., Kilpatrick, J., & Leung, F. (2013). From the few
to the many: Historical perspectives on who should learn mathematics. In M. A.
Clements, A. Bishop, C. Keitel, J. Kilpatrick & F. Leung (Eds.), Third international
handbook of mathematics education (pp. 740). New York, NY: Springer.
Ellerton, N. F., & Clements, M. A. (2014). Abraham Lincolns cyphering book and ten other
extraordinary cyphering books. New York, NY: Springer.
Jones, C. (2015). The sea and the sky: The history of the Royal Mathematical School of
Christs Hospital. Horsham, UK: Author.
Manzione, C. K. (1995). Christs Hospital of London, 15521598: A passing deed of pity.
London, UK: Associated University Presses.
Nerida F. Ellerton (ellerton@ilstu.edu)

M. A. (Ken) Clements (clements@ilstu.edu)
Department of Mathematics, Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois, USA August 2016
Chapter 1
Mathematics in the Christs Hospital Curriculum Before 1673
Abstract: This chapter considers the place of mathematics in the curriculum at Christs
Hospital, a school in central London, during the period from the establishment of the school
in 1552, to 1673, when the Royal Mathematical School began within the school. Although
there is no known extant manuscript evidence it is almost certain that elementary arithmetic
was the only mathematics taught at the school during those early years, and that students
were introduced to that subject by Writing School masters who adopted classroom
organizational approaches consistent with the cyphering tradition. There would have been an
emphasis on numeration and the four operations, and on calculations involving money and
weights and measures, with the intention of preparing students for apprenticeships as clerks.
The chapter also draws attention to the influence of the Grammar School within Christs
Hospital. Grammar School masters taught Latin and Greek to children deemed to be
capable, and there was an expectation that some would win scholarships to the University
of Cambridge or to the University of Oxfordwhere they would seek to become qualified
lawyers or clergymen within the Church of England. When, in 1673, the Royal Mathematical
School was created, Samuel Pepys and others assumed that mathematics and navigation
studies would be at the pinnacle of academic pursuits within Christs Hospital, but that
assumption ran counter to a school ethos which had developed and matured between 1552
and 1673. The chapter concludes with a summary of six research questions for which
answers will be sought in this book, as well as summaries of each of the ten chapters.
Keywords: Apprenticeship, Blue-coat school, Christs Hospital, Ciphering tradition,

Cyphering tradition, Grammar School (Christs Hospital), History of arithmetic education,
History of mathematics education, Royal Mathematical School, Writing masters
In the Beginning: Christs Hospital 15521673

In 1552, the City of London established a new school, called Christs Hospital, in what
had previously been the Grey Friars Roman Catholic monastery, in Newgate Street, central
London (Manzione, 1995). King Henry VIII had shut down the monastery in 1538, as part of
his dissolution of the monasteries mandate.
Although the purpose of the new school was made clear from the outsetit was to be
mainly for children of Londons poorthere were obvious questions which needed to be
answered about how that purpose should be achieved. How would the school be financed?
Who would administer the school, and who would be the teachers? What would the students
be expected to learn? And, given that the school was to be a large boarding school, how
would the program of studies be linked with the need to feed, clothe, and care for the
children? It was unlikely that any funding would come directly from the Crown because in
1546, when Henry VIII handed the buildings to the City of London, it had been made clear
that the Crown would not meet costs associated with any new enterprise at the venue.
Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

N. F. Ellerton, & M. A. (Ken) Clements, Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson and the beginnings
of secondary school mathematics: A history of the Royal Mathematical School within Christs Hospital,
London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_1
2 1. Mathematics in the Curriculum Before 1673
It would be inappropriate here to provide a detailed analysis of how those questions

were answered during the early years of the schools history, for that has already been done
by various scholars who have written histories of the school (e.g., Allan, 1937; Committee of
Old Blues, 1953; Jones, 2015; Manzione, 1995; Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834; Wilson, 1820).
This book has a narrower focusspecifically, an analysis will be provided of mathematics
education at Christs Hospital between 1673 and 1868, especially within the Royal
Mathematical School (hereafter RMS) which was founded in 1673. It will be argued that,
from both national and international perspectives, the creation of RMS represented a
watershed in the history of school mathematics.
The purpose of this chapter is to identify political and educational dimensions of a
developing school culture which affected what the school was able to do when it established
RMS. The 1673 move to establish RMS was not one that would have been expected, given
the kind of schooling and care provided at Christs Hospital during the period 15521673.
Around 1550 the population of England was about 3 million and that of the city of
London about 70,000 (Wrigley & Schofield, 1981). Both populations were growing
rapidlyindeed, during the period 14501550 Londons population had increased fourfold,
and by 1600 it would reach 200,000 (Finlay, 1981). In 1552 the City of London, responding
to pressures generated by the existence of large numbers of young children begging in the
streets, and by high levels of lawlessness (Beier, 1974), agreed to King Edward VIs request
for the City to assume responsibility for three former Roman Catholic monasteries which had
been closed by Henry VIII (see Figure 1.1). The buildings would now be termed Hospitals
and be called St Thomas the Apostle, Bridewell, and Christs Hospital.
Figure 1.1. Edward VI, presenting the charter of the Hospital to the Corporation of London.
in June 1553. [This illustration is from an old painting by Hans Holbein, reproduced in
Historical and Descriptive Notice of Christs Hospital, November 21, 1840, p. 1].
The newly-created institutions would have different functions: St. Thomas the Apostle
would concern itself with the care of the sick and needy; Christs Hospital would attend to
the physical and educational needs of orphans and other destitute children and adults; and
Bridewell would become a correctional workshop to occupy usefully the time of those who,
although physically capable, had become idle and attracted to crime (Clark & Slack, 1972;
In the Beginning: Christs Hospital 15521673 3
Griffin, 1998; Historical and Descriptive Notice of Christs Hospital, 1840; Manzione 1995;
Slack, 1988).
With a large number of children to feed, clothe and educate, buildings to maintain,
equipment to purchase and maintain, and administrators, nurses, and teachers to pay, Christs
Hospital needed regular and reliable sources of income. It was decided that the money would
come largely through bequests and donations, with administrative guidance being provided
by well-to-do governors. According to Manzione (1995):
The hospitals provided a two-pronged opportunity for their governors to do good
deeds by helping the poor, and to provide status positions for the London elite.
The presidency of the hospitals and the governorships allowed men with vast
experience to exercise their talents beyond the confines of their trades and daily
lives, to serve their fellow Londoners in a useful, productive, and visible capacity.
Although the governors of Christs and the other hospitals were drawn from a
small elite, their charges came from a variety of backgrounds and circumstances.
These same men who served as governors of the royal hospitals not only gave
money to the cause but gave their time, energy and, above all, a guiding sense of
purpose. (p. 137)
From the beginning, wealthy benefactors tended to make donations and bequests to enable
the most capable of the Christs Hospital graduates to take up exhibitions (i.e., scholarships)
at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford. This had profound curriculum
implicationsbecause boys proceeding to a university needed to be able to read scholarly
texts written in Latin or Greek. Therefore, so the argument went, a Grammar School was
needed at Christs Hospital, in order to provide the necessary preliminary studies in the
classics for those who, upon leaving school, would proceed to higher-level studies.
Surprisingly few details are known about the education programs at Christs Hospital
during the first 25 years of its existence as a school. That said, there can be no doubt that the
early programs were heavily influenced by instructions given by those who left large legacies
to the school. Donations and bequests were the life-blood of the school, and the wishes of
donors had to be respected.
The Emergence of Christs Hospital as a School for the Poor, but with Elite Tendencies
From its beginning, Christs Hospital had separate Grammar and Infant schools
(Manzione, 1995; Trollope, 1834). In 1562 the Grammar School master was one of the
highest-paid employees in the schoolhe received 15 pounds a year, and was assisted by an
usher who was paid 10 pounds a year. The Grammar School masters were allocated
residences within the school, free of rental charges (Trollope, 1834). By contrast, John
Watson, a clerk, received 10 pounds a year, and an extra 3 pounds 6 shillings and 8 pence per
year for being the Writing School master (Committee of Old Blues, 1953, p. 7). Thus, the
work of the Grammar School master was judged to be much more valuable than that of
Writing School master, despite the fact that the Grammar School master not only dealt with
fewer students but also had a well-paid usher to support him.
According to Trollope (1834), from the outset the boys in the Grammar School not only
made considerable progress in classical knowledge (p. 68) but they also acquired religious
knowledge. Such was the status of the Grammar School that the undermaster (or usher)
had no trouble attracting outside private students who were taught classics on the school
premises. This was permitted and justified by the argument that the nation needed to train a
new set of clergymen committed to the recently-created Church of Englandand, from its
beginning, Christs Hospital was thought to be an important part of the mechanism by which
that might be achieved. It was regarded as axiomatic that future clergymen needed to study
Latin and Greek, and therefore the Grammar School at Christs Hospital, whose main duty
was to teach Latin, Greek, and perhaps Hebrew, was of national importance.
During the period 15521673 there was a steady increase in tagged scholarships,
funded by wealthy individuals, which enabled Christs Hospital graduates to proceed to
university studies and, ultimately, to complete degrees. The university most-named in the
bequests was the University of Cambridge. Fortunately, for the historian, scholarships that
Christs Hospital students could take in order to proceed to that University were listed by
Robert Potts (1855), in his Liber Cantabrigiensis: An Account of the Aids Afforded to Poor
Students. Brief details of scholarships available, between 1552 and 1673, to Christs Hospital
students proceeding to the University of Cambridge are shown in Table 1.1 (which also lists
a few scholarships for students wishing to attend the University of Oxford). After 1673,
scholarships to students from Christs Hospital for courses at either the University of
Cambridge or the University of Oxford continued to be made available through bequests.
Carol Manzione (1995) maintained that between 1552 and 1598 only a tiny minority
of the alumni of Christs Hospital attended the University of Cambridge or the University of
Oxford (p. 151). To bolster her argument, she cited James Friths (1803) edited collection
and also data from an analysis carried out by George A. T. Allan (1937) which showed that,
of the students who attended Christs Hospital between 1552 and 1598, only 29 subsequently
enrolled at either Cambridge or Oxford. That number may seem to have been small for a 46-
year period, but the very existence of the scholarships gave the Grammar School a status
which would not otherwise have been easy to establish.
According to Trollope (1834), by the year 1661 more than 260 pounds was being paid
annually to support seven former Christs Hospital students at the University of Cambridge,
and almost 60 pounds annually to support a student at the University of Oxford. To gain a
scholarship a student needed to have studied the classics while at school, and therefore the
Grammar School had come to be regarded, and to regard itself, as crucially important in the
development and maintenance of a strong academic reputation within and beyond the school.
Between 1552 and 1673, then, part of the emerging school culture embraced the idea
that academically talented boys at Christs Hospital should have a chance of proceeding to
university studies (Trollope, 1834). Since facility with classics was a prerequisite for entry to
both the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, the Grammar School
focused on the study of Latin and Greek texts. That inevitably resulted in the highest
achievers receiving the loudest plaudits. Given the circumstances, it was not surprising that
elitist tendencies developed within the school.
What needs to be emphasized here is that almost all of the Grammar School students at
Christs Hospital who were prepared for possible entry to the University of Cambridge or the
University of Oxfordthese prized students were called the Grecianswould have
studied virtually no mathematics beyond arithmetic during their years at school. Most would
have spent a short time in the Writing School, where they would have been introduced to an
elementary arithmetic curriculum which included the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, and
calculations with the four operations on money, weights and measures. But manyand
probably mostof the Grammar School boys who proceeded to a university would have left
school not knowing their multiplication tables.
Scholarships to Cambridge and Oxford 15521673 5
Table 1.1
Scholarships Available to Christs Hospital Students to Attend the University of Cambridge
or the University of Oxford, 15521673 (from Potts, 1855)
Source of Amount (if Given) and Purpose of For Which Potts
Funding, and Year Funding University? (1855)
Thomas Dixon, 6 pounds each year Either p. 457
1585 Cambridge
or Oxford
Lady Mary 20 pounds a year, towards the 6 at p. 209
Ramsey, 1596 maintenance of 12 poor scholars Cambridge,
6 at Oxford
Lady Mary 4 scholarships to St. Peters College, for Cambridge p. 209
Ramsey, 1601 those who intended to take holy orders
Lady C. 3 scholarships to St. Catherines Hall Cambridge p. 218
Barnardiston, 1633 (preference to Christs Hospital students
for two of them)
Mr W. Richards, 2 exhibitions to Emmanuel College Cambridge p. 365
1649 (preference to Christs Hospital students)
Mr William 150 pounds, for sending poor scholars Cambridge p. 458
Rudge, bred up at Christs Hospital
1652
Mr John Perryn, 5 pounds per year towards the Cambridge p. 458
1656 maintenance of one scholar from Christs
Hospital
The Rev. Abraham 1 scholar from Christs Hospital Cambridge p. 433
Colfe, 1656
Mr Thomas 7 pounds per annum, for each of 2 Cambridge p. 458
Stretchley, 1661 scholars from Christs Hospital,
Mr John Brown, 6 scholars from Christs Hospital, 3 at Cambridge p. 298
1662 Emmanuel College and 3 at Christs and
College p. 366
Mr William 8 pounds per year for 7 years for a Cambridge p. 458
Williams, 1665 scholar from Christs Hospital or Oxford
Mr Erasmus 100 pounds per year for poor children Cambridge p. 458
Smith, 1666 belonging to Christs Hospital or Oxford
Mr Thomas 8 poor children of Christs Hospital Cambridge p. 458
Barnes 1667
Mr Thomas Rich, 6 pounds each, 2 exhibitions, for 2 Cambridge pp. 458
1672 children of Christs Hospital 459
Sir John Smith, 6 pounds 13 shillings and 4 pence, for a Cambridge p. 459
1673 poor scholar who had been brought up in or Oxford
Christs Hospital
The Writing School at Christs Hospital

From the outset the school created a so-called Infant School, for the youngest children,
and a Grammar School in which those children who were deemed to be academically capable
studied classical and religious texts. Although criteria by which Grammar School children
would be selected have not been specified in school records, obviously there was a great
divide between criteria for selection to the Infant School and those for the Grammar School.
In 1577, Dame Mary Ramsey provided substantial funds for the development of a
Writing School at Christs Hospital (Freeman, 1913). The purpose of the Writing School was
to assist students who had learned to read to take the next step by learning to write. The
Writing Schools curriculum always included cyphering, that is to say the writing of
arithmetical rules and cases, and the solving of arithmetical exercises, in a special book
known as a cyphering book (Christs Hospital, 1595; Ellerton & Clements, 2012). The idea
was that students who learned to write and to calculate would be ready to take up apprentice-
ships as clerks or shopkeepers when they left school. Although only a tiny proportion of
15-year-olds in and around London could read, write, and calculate, Christs Hospital aimed
at getting most of its pupils to that stage (Manzione, 1995; Page, 1954; Shelley, 1710).
More will be said about the cyphering tradition in later chapters, especially in Chapter 5.
Here it suffices to note that during the period 15521673 most Christs Hospital students
spent some time in the Writing School, and since there was always only one writing master
(City of London, 1840), sometimes assisted by one or two ushers, it was impossible for a
teacher to devote much time to helping individual learners. Because there were always large
numbers of children in the Writing School who had different levels of understanding of
arithmetic, whole-class teaching from the front of a room was not feasibleand, in any case,
there was a centuries-old recitation tradition whereby arithmetic was taught by getting pupils
to prepare handwritten cyphering books. Part of the process was for each student to
participate in one-on-one, question-and-answer recitation sessions with his or her teacher
(Ellerton & Clements, 2014). On leaving school, the pupils would take their cyphering books
with them, for guidance. Although, as far as we know, there are no extant cyphering books
prepared by Christs Hospital pupils during the period 15521673, those books undoubtedly
existed. Each would have featured statements of rules and cases for numeration, addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division, money calculations, weights and measures calculations,
reduction and, for some, the celebrated rule of three. Entries on each page would have been
completed in the pupils neatest handwriting (Ellerton & Clements, 2012, 2014).
In 1664 Samuel Pepys consulted Edward Cocker (16311675), a well-known, London-
based writing master and author of mathematics texts. Pepys recorded in his diary that he was
extremely impressed with Cockers work. It was no surprise that Cocker was simultaneously
a writing master and a teacher of arithmetic, for that combination was traditional. Almost all
writing masters specialized in the teaching of arithmetic. In the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, elite public schools like Eton, Harrow, Westminster, and St Pauls did not
include mathematics beyond elementary arithmetic, and perhaps elementary geometry, in
their curricula. With their eyes firmly on requirements of the University of Cambridge and
the University of Oxford, they prepared their best students in Latin, Greek and Hebrew
(Leach, 1911). The Grammar School at Christs Hospital did the same with its Grecians
despite the different backgrounds of the boys at the elite schools and those at Christs
Hospital. Christs Hospital had quickly become a school for the poor, but one with high
aspirations.
Six Main Research Questions 7
Six Main Research Questions Addressed in this Book

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were numerous schools in
European nations, particularly within Continental Europe, at which children learned to deal
with Hindu-Arabic numerals (namely 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9), and representations of
numbers formed from those numerals using an ingenious base-10 place-value system. The
main focus was usually on the four operationsaddition, subtraction, multiplication and
division of counting numbersand on the application of these operations to word problems
involving money and every-day measurements (Bjarnadttir, 2014). Many children aged
from 10 years prepared handwritten cyphering books featuring, mainly, notes on arithmetic
and solutions to arithmetic word problemsand in recent years some of these have been
studied (see, e.g., Ellerton & Clements, 2012, 2014; Kool, 1999). Christs Hospital, as well
as Jesuit schools and other religious-based schools on the Continent, included elementary
arithmetic in their curricula (City of London, 1840; Schubring, 2014; Stamper, 1906).
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Netherlands, France, Germany, and
Russia were among nations that created military schools for selected young men from about
the age of 16 (see, e.g., Confalonieri, 2015; Ivashova, 2011). At those schools, mathematics-
beyond-elementary-arithmetic (e.g., decimal fractions, logarithms, plane and spherical
trigonometry) became integral parts of the curriculum, and applications of these forms of
mathematics to navigation, surveying, fortification, and other practical matters of the day,
were emphasized (Karp, 2014; Krger, 2015a, 2015b; Schubring, 2014).
The distinctive feature of this present work is that it examines, for a period covering
almost two centuries, the mathematics-beyond-arithmetic program, established in 1673 for
12- to 16-year-old boys within the Royal Mathematical School (RMS) at Christs Hospital, in
London. As far as we know, the RMS program was the first of its kind, in the sense that it
was the first to require 12- to 16-year-olds to study, on a daily basis, a formal mathematical
curriculum that included topics like logarithms, plain and spherical trigonometry, algebra,
geometry, the various kinds of sailing, and astronomy (Stamper, 1906). RMS boys were
expected to follow a rigorous curriculum, and their learning was externally assessed by
outside nominated experts in mathematics and navigation (Ellerton & Clements, 2014).
We identified the following six questions for detailed study. Although our analyses of
primary and secondary sources were not constrained by the need to provide answers to these
six questions, issues associated with the questions were, nonetheless, never far away from
our thinking as we prepared this book.
Answers to each of these questions will be given in the final chapter of this book.
The Main Arguments Presented in this Book

This book comprises ten chapters, and there are six appendices. Our aim is to show that
RMS provided a model by which educational institutions at the school level could offer
instruction to ordinary children in mathematics beyond arithmetic and elementary geometry.
It will be argued that Christs Hospitals influence was fresh, extensive and international, and
its example led to the creation of secondary school mathematics curricula which were not
to be found in schools before RMS was created. Seen from that perspective, this book aims
to do something which, as far as we know, has never previously been done. We will attempt
to show that what might be termed the modern approach to secondary school mathematics
had its beginnings in England with the creation of the Royal Mathematical School in 1673.
By the term secondary school mathematics we shall mean a form of school mathematics
that was not to be regarded as terminal, but rather as preparatory to a study of higher forms of
mathematics and its applications. That definition looked forward to definitions of secondary
education that would be given in the British Governments (Great Britain, 1868) Taunton
Commission report and in the 1902 Regulations for Secondary Schools prescribed by the
English Board of Education (Maclure, 1973).
This first chapter has sketched the history of Christs Hospital, from 1552 to 1673,
before the RMS was created. Before 1673 most Christs Hospital students were poore boys
who, as students resident within the school, were taught to read, write, and cypher to the rule
of three within a strongly religious school community. Some of the most capable boys were
introduced to the study of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew within the Grammar School, and it
was assumed that a small minority of these boys would take up Christs Hospital scholarships
so that they could study at either the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford.
Chapter 2 will summarize social, political and military settings in which the creation of
RMS, in 1673, needs to be placed if the early history of RMS is to be fully appreciated.
In Chapter 3, the work of 10 stars in the RMS firmamentoutstanding persons
intimately associated with the work of RMS during its first 120 years of existencewill be
summarized. The 10 stars are: Samuel Pepys, John Flamsteed, Edmond Halley, Jonas Moore,
Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, John Robertson, and
William Wales. Each of these 10 was a member of the Royal Society, and each made
important contributions to the development of RMS, especially in relation to curricular and
program issues.
Chapter 4, titled Samuel Pepys and the Early RMS Years 16731677, will be mainly
concerned with the structure and modes of operation that Pepys, various Christs Hospital
committees, and Trinity House, created for the operation of RMS, and how that structure was
found to be inadequate during the early years of RMSs existence. In 1677, in a remarkably
frank and detailed document, Pepys drew attention to what he perceived to be the weaknesses
of RMS (see Appendix A to this book), and Chapter 4 will consider defects that Samuel
Pepys identified and possible remedies which were agreed to by the General Court of
Christs Hospital. This analysis will reveal difficulties that Pepys and Christs Hospital faced
in creating a structure that would not only meet the objectives that Pepys had in mind but
would also be consistent with the long-established approaches to school education at Christs
Hospital. Traditionally, in historical accounts of RMS, the early years are presented in terms
of one failure after another. In Chapter 4 we allude to some of those failuresbut in so doing
we argue that the causes of the failures were to be found in the authorities inadequate
understanding of school education, especially in relation to the mathematics which most
The Main Arguments Presented in this Book 9
children aged between 12 and 16 years were capable of learning. We argue, directly, that if
any blame is to be attached for the initial failures, it should be directed at Samuel Pepys,
Jonas Moore, John Flamsteed, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and Isaac Newton, whose
assumptions with respect to what young children were capable of learning were unrealistic.
Chapter 5, titled Developments in RMS Curricula 16771798, analyzes RMS
curriculum development during the first 125 years of its existence by employing modern
concepts of intended curriculum, implemented curriculum, and received curriculum.
The intended curriculum was initially interpreted in terms of syllabuses defined by the school
and by Trinity House, but James Hodgson succeeded in establishing his 1723 textbook,
which was written specifically for the RMS program, as the de facto intended curriculum.
During the 1750s, The Elements of Navigation, a textbook written by John Robertson when he
was RMS master, became the de facto intended curriculum and remained as such for over a
century. We have argued that from the beginning RMSs implemented curriculum fell into
line with expectations arising from the cyphering tradition. Throughout the period the
received, or experienced, curriculum for most RMS students was somewhat less than what
examiners from Trinity House attempted to measure when they assessed students to see if
they were ready to take up sea-related apprenticeships.
Chapter 6, titled RMS Comes of Age 17091755, starts by describing a spectacular
failurethe establishment of a second mathematical school at Christs Hospital. This short-
lived experiment ended with the death in 1715 of Humfrey Ditton, who was the New
Mathematical Schools first and only master. Upon Dittons death Christs Hospital
rescinded its decision to have a second mathematical school. James Hodgsons deep
knowledge of higher mathematics, navigation, practical mathematics, and astronomy,
together with his outstanding ability as a teacher, saved the RMS, and showed that
mathematics for the people was indeed possible. Curiously, Hodgsons work as RMS
master between 1709 and 1755 has been much neglected in most histories of Christs
Hospital.
Chapter 7 focuses on William Waless work as RMS master between 1776 and 1798.
Most published histories of Christs Hospital have glorified the work of Wales (see, e.g.,
Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834) while hardly mentioning that of James Hodgson. We shall
argue that the positive interpretations of Waless work as master of RMS should be tempered
by a recognition that it was during his period that RMS began to lose its distinctive thrust and
started to operate and look like many of the mathematics departments in British schools for
the elite during the second half of the eighteenth century. In order to justify that argument, it
will be necessary to consider educational politics within Christs Hospital, and Waless
participation in the events and outcomes which were part of the political scene.
Chapter 8 surveys RMSs fortunes in the first half of the nineteenth century. Although
some of the work by RMS students was outstanding, this tended to be overshadowed by
consequences of a redefined mathematical department at Christs Hospital for which the
main aim was to prepare the best students for mathematical study at universities. The best
mathematical students at Christs Hospital were no longer in RMS, and hence the reputation
of RMS declined. In fact, in histories of Christ Hospital it has not been recognized that
immediately before William Wales became RMS master, Christs Hospital was thought to be
the best mathematical school in Englandand indeed one of the best in the world (Hans,
1951a, 1951b).
Chapter 9 will summarize a theoretical base from which the development of RMS
might be studied. That base is to be found within the concept of lag time, which is defined
as the amount of time between when a mathematical development (such as the definition of a
decimal fraction) was first made knownprobably by a mathematician or a practitioner
and the time when that development was normally studied as part of the implemented
mathematics curriculum in schools in particular communities (Ellerton & Clements, 2014).
In preparing this book we did not start with lag-time theory and fit the data gleaned from the
historical records to the theory. Rather, we recognized that the data that we explored, and our
interpretations of those data, were entirely consistent with the lag-time theory which we had
outlined previously (see, for example, Clements & Ellerton, 2015).
Establishing an appropriate place for RMS in the modern history of school mathematics
will be the main concern of Chapter 10. If the arguments that we put forward in this book are
apposite, then one might begin to wonder why the name James Hodgson does not appear in
A. G. Howsons (1982) A History of Mathematics Education in England, or in the Handbook
of the History of Mathematics Education (Karp & Schubring, 2014)or, indeed, in any other
account of the history of school mathematics. Chapter 10 will be mainly concerned with
answering the six research questions presented earlier in this chapter. We will then discuss
limitations of our research, and point to related questions worthy of further research.
In closing this first chapter it will be in order to emphasize that this is an unusual book
in the sense that it looks at the history of an important school over a long period of time from
the perspective of the international history of school mathematics. Recently, Douglas L.
Wilson, the distinguished Lincoln and Jefferson historian, wrote in his foreword to our
Thomas Jefferson and his Decimals 17751810 (Clements & Ellerton, 2015):
The authors of this book make a notable contribution to Jefferson scholarship in a
way that reminds us that the scholarly enterprise is a two-way street. Having
drawn on the existing accumulation of what is known about Jefferson, they have
substantially added to this store of knowledge by the application of their particular
area of scholarly interest and expertise. (Wilson, 2015, p. vi)
In this present book, we have drawn on what others have written about the history of Christs
Hospital and, in particular, about the history of the Royal Mathematical School within
Christs Hospital. However, since we have looked at events and people from a different
perspective, and scrutinized many previously unexamined documents, the questions we have
asked, the answers we have given, and the stories we have told, are different from what has
appeared in accounts by other historians. Although we expect that our story will be of
special interest to mathematics educators, we also believe that it has something to say to
othersto those who are interested in the general history of Christs Hospital and, beyond
that, to those who are concerned with the history of modern school education.
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Chapter 2
Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic: Expanding the Domain
of School Mathematics
Abstract: This chapter summarizes and analyzes educational, financial, military, and
political contexts associated with a sequence of events which led to the creation, in 1673, of
the Royal Mathematical School (RMS) within a school, Christs Hospital, which had existed
for more than 120 years. The creation of RMS, with its strong emphasis on mathematics and
navigation education, represented a major shift in the schools curriculum and mission. The
wisdom of the decision to establish RMS as a specialist mathematics/navigation education
entity with a rigorous intended mathematics curriculum is questionedgiven that there was
no guarantee that suitably qualified teachers, with proven experience in teaching mathematics
beyond arithmetic to 12- to 16-year-olds, would be available.
Keywords: Anglo-Dutch Wars, British navy, Christopher Wren, Christs Hospital, Great
Fire of London, Great Plague, James Hodgson, King Charles II, Medway, Navigation laws,
Royal Mathematical School, Samuel Pepys, Trinity House
In 1664 Great Britain captured New Amsterdam, in North America, from the Dutch,
and renamed it New York. Although, at the time, this seemed to be a triumph for Great
Britain, the event occurred at a time when the United Provinces (or Holland or The
Netherlands) and Great Britain were supposed to have been at peace. At that time it was a
dangerous thing to insult the Dutch, for the Netherlands was arguably stronger militarily and
financially than any other nation in the world (Davids, 2001; de Vries & van der Woude,
1997; Gascoigne, 1992).
In the 1660s the Dutch had large merchant and shipping fleetsin fact, about 10
percent of all Dutch adult males were sailors, and the Dutch had more ships than England,
France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain combined (Clapham, 1910; Haley, 1972; Israel, 1992;
Ormond, 2003). Such was the might of the Dutch navy, and the volume of international trade
enjoyed by the Netherlands, that Great Britain felt the need to protect trade between itself and
its colonies. Accordingly, the British Navigation Acts of 1660 stipulated:
Only British ships could transport imported and exported goods from its colonies;
Only British citizens were allowed to trade with British colonies;
Commodities such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton wool which were produced in
British colonies could be exported to British ports only (Ormond, 2003).
Maintaining a positive trade balance was not the only challenge faced by the British
government during the 1660s. Indeed, the period 16651667 heaped calamity upon calamity
on the British people, especially those living in London. In 1665 the Great (Bubonic) Plague
killed about 10 percent of Londons population (Bell, 1924). Then, in September 1666, came
the Great Fire of London which consumed over 13000 houses. At the time, the nation was
engaged in what became known as the Second Anglo-Dutch War (16651667), and national

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_2
14 2. Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic
morale plummeted in 1667 when the Dutch fleet boldly entered the mouth of the Thames
River, captured the fort at Sheerness, broke through the defences to the Medway and
destroyed 15 of the British Navys ships (Pearce, 1901). British humiliation was complete
when HMS Royal Charles, the largest of the British big ships, was captured and towed
down the Thames and across to the Netherlands (Allen, 1970; Boxer, 1974; Coote, 2000;
Israel, 1992, 1995). That event has, for ever, remained in the collective British psyche (see,
for example, the full-page advertisement, shown in Figure 2.1, which was placed in the
English periodical History Today (p. iii), for August 1973).
Figure 2.1. The day the Dutch burnt our boats (from History Today, August 1973, p. iii).
How and Why the Royal Mathematical School was Established 15
Accounts of How and Why the Royal Mathematical School was Established at Christs
Hospital, London, in 1673
Most of the accounts of how and why the Royal Mathematical School (hereafter
RMS) was established in 1673, by a decree of King Charles II, do not vary much.
Basically, Christs Hospital, a school in central London which had been established in 1552
(Manzione, 1995), was reconfigured and rebuilt, and a new section within it was expected to
concentrate on navigation and mathematics education (Plumley, 1973, 1976). In many of the
accounts, the series of national crises, mentioned above, are outlined, and then the
governments decision is explained in terms of a perceived urgent need to bolster the quality
of navigation education in Great Britain (see, e.g., Dring, 1877; Kirk, 1935; Pearce, 1901;
Trollope, 1834). The 1667 Dutch victory in the Medway is presented as having forced the
advisors to King Charles II, of England, and especially Samuel Pepys, Clerk of the Acts to
the Navy Board and, from, June 1673, Secretary to the Admiralty Commission and an
official in Trinity House (which developed naval policy), to take peace negotiations
seriously. Late in July 1667 the Treaty of Breda was agreed to, by which the British
Navigation Acts were modified to allow Dutch and German goods to enter Britain in Dutch
ships. Most of the colonies or cities which had been captured during the war were returned,
although the Dutch kept Surinam and Great Britain kept New York and New Jersey. This
negotiated peace did not last long. After a brief period in which Holland, Britain and Sweden
combined to oppose King Louis XIV, the French monarch managed to bribe King Charles II
to change sides, and in 1672 the Third Anglo-Dutch War broke out (Childs, 2013).
The Anglo-Dutch wars resulted in the British Navy losing many of its leaders, and the
traditional thesis on why RMS was established asserts that King Charles II, of England,
advised by Samuel Pepys, decided that something had to be done, immediately, to remedy
the situation (Plumley, 1973, 1976). A scheme was put in place to improve the quality of
British navigation by creating a schoolactually, part of a schoolwith a curriculum which
focused on mathematics and navigation. Pepys was fortunate that both King Charles II and
his successor to the throne, King James II, had deep and genuine interests in navigation
(Coote, 2000; Davies, 2008; Moore, 1688). In the early 1670s King Charles was pleased to
support the idea of a Royal Mathematical School which would focus on training navigators.
Clifford Jones (2015) has recently questioned this traditional thesis of how and why
RMS was created. Jones has argued that Samuel Pepyss influence in the sequence of events
leading up to the 1673 decision was minimal, and that historians who have emphasized the
influence of Pepys have created a myth. Jones has argued that the idea for a navigation
school at Christs Hospital originated in the minds of Sir Robert Clayton, a wealthy British
merchant banker and politician, Sir Patience Ward, and another unnamed person (Jones,
2015). Sir Robert Clayton happened to meet Mr William Parrey, the Clerk of Christs
Hospital, and Parrey asked him for help in persuading the Crown to agree to pay Christs
Hospital over 7000 pounds because that amount was owed to the school as a result of a 1646
bequest from Richard Aldworth. The Crown had managed to withhold the legacy and,
following the Plague and the Great Fire, Christs Hospital desperately needed access to the
money (see, e.g., Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, November 6th, 1667).
Joness (2015) conclusion is clearly stated:
The shortage of men trained to serve at sea was more likely to have been a matter
under wide and general discussion in the early 1670s, and if Samuel Pepys did
propose a school of navigation, possibly only within a family discussion, he made
no reference then to Christs Hospital. Sir Robert Clayton had a similar idea, and
he was even prepared to form a partnership to fund such an institution. There is no
evidence that Pepys was the original promoter of the Royal Mathematical School
at Christs Hospital. (p. 18)
After carefully examining all manuscripts in the Collection of Matters Relating to Christs
Hospital and Charles IIs Mathematical Foundation There, 16731682, with Subsequent
Collections up to 1684, held in Volume 2612 at the Pepys Library at Magdalene College,
Cambridge, we reached a similar conclusion to that put forward by Jones (2015) regarding
the origin of the concept of a Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital. Specifically,
the genesis for the idea that the Royal Mathematical School be located at Christs Hospital
probably came from Sir Robert Clayton and Sir Patience Ward, and that the General Court at
Christs Hospital was prepared to go along with the idea, provided it would mean that the
school would get access to the funds to which it was entitled from the Aldworth legacy.
That said, we have no doubt that the idea of establishing such a schoolbut not
necessarily at Christs Hospital (Turner, 1990)had been considered, at least as early as
1672, by Samuel Pepys and the Earl of Montague (Lord Sandwich)see page 111 of
Volume 2612 in the Pepys Library. Pepys, as Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board and then
Secretary for the Affairs of the Navy, would have welcomed the proposal that the new school
become part of Christs Hospital. Such was the extent of his influence on British naval policy
in August 1673 that it is inconceivable that the school could have been established at that
time without his approval (Bryant, 1935; Christs Hospital, 1953; Davies, 2008; Ollard,
1974).
The inspiration for what might be achieved by such a move came from the Netherlands.
Around 1600 Simon Stevin, mathematician and counselor of Prince Mauricethe general of
the armies of the States Generalfounded a training school in Leiden, called Duytsche
Mathematique, for military engineers (Jacob & Secretan, 2013; Krger, 2015a, 2015b;
Waters, 1958). The school, in which the language of instruction was Dutch rather than Latin,
was not intended for school childrenrather, it was aimed at barely literate masons,
navigators, carpenters, surveyors and engineers who, after attending theoretical classes in
the winter, could be conscripted to the Dutch army to apply what they had learned.
According to Jones (2015) the French government also moved, in the seventeenth century, to
establish engineering schools for boys destined for service in the French navy or merchant
marine.
Duytsche Mathematique was not a university but during the seventeenth century it
profoundly influenced mathematics curricula in Dutch universities (Van Berkel, 1988). In
England, many wondered whether Dutch military superiority was directly attributable to the
work of graduates of the Duytsche Mathematique (Devreese & Vanden Berghe, 2008; Haley,
1972; Pepys, 1995). Although, there can be little doubt that the main motive behind the move
of Christs Hospitals officials to persuade government to establish RMS was to get access to
funds associated with the Aldworth bequest, Samuel Pepyss immediate objective was to
establish a high-quality school for 12- to 16-year old boys who would, on graduation,
become apprentices in either the Royal Navy or the merchant marine (Committee of Old
Blues, 1953; Howson, 1982; Pearce, 1901; Plumley, 1976; Sloan, 1986, 2000; Wilson, 1821).
Although the traditional interpretation of why RMS was created, as just outlined,
sounds plausible, it masks the remarkable inventiveness of the decision to establish RMS as a
program for children aged from 12 to 16 years. Pepys wrote that the idea was wholly new,
and specially calculated for the advancement of navigation (quoted in Allen, 1970, p. i). As
far as we know, such a scheme had never before been tried, anywhere else in the world.
In the Great Fire of London, in 1666, most of the buildings at Christs Hospital were
destroyed, and that fact provided government with the opportunity to redefine the schools
purpose. The rebuilding of the school, which was completed in 1705, was fully funded by
donations and bequests. Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor were the architects for
the designs of major buildings in the new school as well as of Christ Church, the church
which was located next to the school. The school, as it was reconstructed after the Great Fire
of 1666, is depicted in Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.2. Image of Christs Hospital and Christ Church (right foreground) depicting the
schools reconstruction, under the design of Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor,
after the Great Fire of London of 1666. The rebuilding was completed by 1705. This view of
the reconstructed school has been called Kips Viewafter a black-and-white engraving
by Johannes Kip (Barford, 2013; Maitland & Entick, 1772). The colored engraving, by
William Henry Toms (c.1770), is a public domain image.
There were four unusual components of the agreement by which Christs Hospital
would seek to establish a better-educated, more effective navy and merchant marine fleet:
1. The 40 scholarship students would be known as Kings boys. They would not be
young adults, but rather boys aged from 12 to 16 years who would be chosen from
boys already attending Christs Hospital. Most of the boys would have been
admitted to the school when only seven or eight years old.
2. Throughout their four years as Mathemats, and particularly during their last two
years, the attention of Kings boys in the RMS program would be focused on
learning mathematics relevant to navigation.
3. The quality of the RMS program would be monitored by Trinity House, a semi-
government authority which included some of the nations top navigation authorities
and scientists.
4. Each RMS graduate would be required to become an apprentice, for seven years, in
some sea-faring capacity. Although not all RMS graduates would be immediately
apprenticed within the Royal Navy, the monarch would have the right to insist that
an apprentice in his seventh year be required to serve in the Royal Navy.
According to Jones (1954) and Davis (1962), Christs Hospital was the first large pre-
university school in England in which mathematics-beyond-arithmetic became an important
part of the curriculum. When Alexander Dallas Bache (1839), Benjamin Franklins grandson,
visited Christs Hospital in the 1830s, he declared that its grand scale was so much beyond
any other in Great Britain, and, indeed, in the world (pp. 6566). Nicholas Hans (1951a)
described the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital as the first modern school
established anywhere in the world (p. 532).
Although the Royal Mathematical School was ostensibly intended for the education
mainly of poore boys, the British government believed that many boys whose fathers had
died at sea, especially while serving in the Royal Navy, deserved serious consideration for
admission to the School. Because of the frequency of wrecks at sea, piracy, accidents, etc.,
there were many young boys who had lost sea-faring fathers (Davies, 2008), and there was a
demand for boys from such families to be admitted to Christs Hospital. But poore boys
from families which had had no links with navigation could be, and were, also admitted.
One of the remarkable features of the design of the RMS program was the extent to
which quality assurance was incorporated. The summative aspect of this quality assurance
was placed in the hands of the Corporation of Trinity House. In 1513 a guild of mariners who
believed that the unregulated practices of pilots on the Thames endangered life and cargo,
petitioned King Henry VIII for a license to set up a fraternity which would enable a
Corporation to regulate pilotage on the river. A Royal Charter was granted to some London-
based master wardens and assistants of the Guild Fraternity or Brotherhood of the Most
Glorious and Undivided Trinity and of Saint Clement in the Parish of Deptford Strond in the
County of Kent (Adams & Woodman, 2013). Almost certainly, the introduction of Trinity
House as the highest level of quality control for the RMS program was the brain-child of
Samuel Pepys, who had been made a Younger Brother of Trinity House in 1662, and an
Elder Brother in 1672. Pepys was Master of Trinity House in 16761677, a period when
the need to improve the design of the initial RMS program was one of his major concerns
(see Appendix A to this book). During 16851686 Pepys was, once again, Master of Trinity
House.
By the beginning of the 19th century, Great Britain would be one of the worlds leading
maritime powers (Mahan, 1898; Waters, 1958). As early as 1697, Peter the Great, Czar of
Russia, showed interest in the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital and two of its
graduates (one was 15 years old, the other 17) were appointed as teachers in a training school
for navigators which opened in 1701 in Moscow (Allan & Morpurgo, 1984; Cross, 2007;
Hans, 1951a, 1951b; Howson, 1982). Graduates of the Moscow School of Mathematics and
Navigation would subsequently become teachers in the famous cyphering schools that Peter
the Great established in 1716 to teach arithmetic and geometry to children drawn from all
levels of Russian society (Cracraft, 1971; Ivashova, 2011; Okenfuss, 1973).
From the outset it was planned that an education within RMS would enhance the
theoretical and practical backgrounds of recruits for the Royal Navy and merchant marine
(Hans, 1951a, 1951b). Initially, however, it was not recognized just how challenging it might
be to achieve that goal. It will be worthwhile, for a moment, to consider why the creation of
an effective high-level training school for future navigators at Christs Hospital might have
been such a difficult thing to do. Five compelling reasons can be identified:
1. There was no training school for navigators in Great Britain, or indeed in any other
nation, like the proposed Royal Mathematical School, which would be aimed at
boys aged between 12 and 16. Those responsible for planning and developing the
Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital had no model from which to work.
There were no established curricula, existing textbooks, or persons who had taught
in like institutions. Also, no deal had been worked out by which graduates would be
apprenticed for service in the Navy or as midshipmen in the merchant marine.
2. Christs Hospital was a 120-year old institution with established traditions and an
existing teaching staff. Within the overall school there was an Infant School, a
Writing School, and a Grammar School at which capable children studied Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew in preparation for entry to professions such as Law, Medicine,
and Divinity. Students from the Grammar School had been sent on a fairly regular
basis to the University of Cambridge (Potts, 1855). So far as mathematics and
navigation were concerned, there was no tradition by which Christs Hospital
children studied mathematics beyond elementary arithmeticthat is to say, beyond
the rule of threeor astronomy, or science.
3. Immediately before the 1670s Christs Hospital, as a school, had experienced
severe traumas. In 1665 The Great Plague had taken the lives of 32 of the schools
students, and in 1666 the Great Fire had gutted all but four of the extensive set of
buildings which had housed the school. This was hardly a time to be asking school
authorities to re-establish priorities in the school, especially when the new proposed
academic mission of the school would have little to do with what the school had
previously been striving to achieve.
4. Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty, was hardly the kind of person one might
expect to know much about mathematics education. He had no children of his own,
had rarely been to sea and, by his own admission, knew virtually no mathematics
(Ollard, 1774; Pepys, 1995).
5. It might be one thing to provide the kind of academic training in navigation and
mathematics that would prepare 12- to-16-year-old boys to become midshipmen,
but it would be another thing for Royal Navy officials and captains in the merchant
marine to agree to take them on as apprentices. It would be yet another thing for
them ultimately to become captains of ships or senior personnel in the Navy. Naval
appointments were coveted by the upper classes, and it would be difficult for naval
authorities to accept the possibility that boys from poor families could have a deep
understanding of the forms of mathematics associated with navigation. It would
have been even more difficult to accept the possibility that they would be suited to
leading and controlling seamen on ships. The same reservations would have been
harbored by captains of merchant ships.
RMSs Challenge
Official records associated with the Royal Mathematical School begin with a
September 1673 royal decree issued by King Charles II stating that a Royal Mathematical
School was to be established at Christs Hospital (Kirk, 1935; Plumley, 1973). The number
of poore boys who would be moved on from the lower sections of the Hospital in order to
study within RMS was to be maintained at 40, and the boys were not to remain at the school
beyond the age of 16.
Forty poore boys in the said Hospitall, who having attained to competent skill in
the Grammar and common Arithmetique to the rule of three in other schools in the
said Hospitall may bee fit to be further educated in a mathematicall school and
there taught and instructed in the art of navigation and of the whole science of
arithmetique until their age and competent proficiency in whole parts of
mathematiques shall have fitted and qualified them in the judgment of the Master
of Trinity House ... (Quoted in Pearce, 1901, p. 101)
On being deemed to be proficient and competent by the RMS master they would, with the
approval of Christs Hospital, be apprenticed for a period of seven years within the Royal
Navy or to a captain of a vessel in the merchant marine. Before a boy could be accepted into
RMS, his guardian, or guardians, would be required to sign a document agreeing to a bond
which would be forfeited if a graduate refused to take up, or complete, such an
apprenticeship. At first it was expected that the boys would study navigation and
mathematics for four years, but within a few years of RMSs creation it was decided that, in
fact, RMS boys would study navigation and mathematics subjects only during the last 18
months of their schooling (Kirk, 1935).
Details of the RMS program were considered at a series of committee meetings in the
1670s (see Appendix A to this book). The committees strenuously debated key issues
associated with the intended curriculum and made deliberations on how that curriculum was
to be implemented. Intellectual giants of the calibre of Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke,
Jonas Moore, and Samuel Pepys attended these meetings.
However, as we shall see in later chapters, especially in Chapters 4 and 5, early RMS
masters struggled to cope with the educationally-challenging demands of teaching a rigorous
curriculum, often in Latin, to ordinary children aged less than 16 years in order that they
would be able to reach the standards set by Trinity House examiners. It was not until 1709
that Christs Hospital found someonenamely James Hodgsonwho was sufficiently
competent mathematically, navigationally, and pedagogically, to be able to satisfy the
expectations, not only of the General Court and the Committee of Almoners of the school,
but also of the Trinity House examiners. Hodgson would be master of the Royal
Mathematical School for 46 yearsbetween 1709 and 1755 (Committee of Old Blues, 1953;
Jones, 2015; Plumley, 1976; Stewart, 1999, 2001; Wigelsworth, 2010).
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Chapter 3
Stars in the RMS Firmament 16731798
Abstract: This chapter identifies a firmament of 10 RMS starscomprising Samuel Pepys,

Jonas Moore, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, John Flamsteed, Edmond
Halley, James Hodgson, John Robertson, and William Wales. It also identifies an eleventh
person, Humfrey Dittona mathematics master at Christs Hospital between 1706 and
1715as someone who had an important influence on the future of RMS. The 10 stars
illuminated the educational world within the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital
at various times during the 125-year period 16731798. Not all the stars shone at the same
time, with the first 30 years of RMSs existence being the time when more of the stars were
shining together than at any other time. After briefly considering peculiar characteristics of
each of the stars, and of Humfrey Ditton, their contributions to RMSs development is
considered. It is concluded that the greatest, most positive, contribution came from James
Hodgson, RMS master between 1709 and 1755.
Keywords: Christs Hospital, Christopher Wren, Edmond Halley, History of school

mathematics, Humfrey Ditton, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, John Flamsteed, John
Robertson, Jonas Moore, Robert Hooke, Royal Mathematical School, Royal Society, Samuel
Pepys, William Wales
Historians have traditionally seen the creation and early development of RMS in terms
of contributions from a few important historical figuresespecially Samuel Pepys, Isaac
Newton and William Wales (see, e.g., Willmoth, 1997a). However, in addition to the hard
work, financial contributions, and wise counsel of Sir Robert Clayton and other persons
directly associated with Christs Hospital (Jones, 2015), there were others who made large
contributions. From 1673 through 1703, the work in relation to RMS of Samuel Pepys, Jonas
Moore, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren, John Flamsteed, and Edmond
Halley was especially noteworthy (see Table 3.1). Table 3.1 also refers to Humfrey Ditton
who, although never officially an RMS master, influenced the progress of RMS between
1706 and 1715. Later stars in the RMS firmament were James Hodgson, John Robertson, and
William Wales. Each of the 11 persons named in Table 3.1 became a Fellow of the Royal
Society, and 3 of the 11Christopher Wren (16801682), Samuel Pepys (16841686), and
Isaac Newton (17031727)served as President of that Society.
The purpose of this chapter is not to provide brief biographies of the 10 stars, and of
Humfrey Dittonfor such biographies are readily available elsewhere. Rather, the purpose is
to focus on the special contributions each made to the Royal Mathematical School at Christs
Hospital between 1673 and 1798. The order in which the 11 persons will be considered will
be roughly chronological. The first to be considered will be Samuel Pepys, because he was a
driving force behind the early work of RMS. This chapter will not include details relating to
Pepyss influence on RMS, because they will be provided in the much fuller account of
Pepys work for RMS in Chapter 4 of this book.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_3
26 3. Stars in the RMS Firmament 16731798
Table 3.1
Summary of 10 Stars in the RMS Firmament, and also of the Influence of Humfrey Ditton
Star, and Life Fellow of the Governor Other Contributions Relevant to the
Span Royal of Christs Development of RMS?
Society? Hospital?
Samuel Pepys Yes Yes (Governor in Important role in the early years of RMS,
(16331703) President 1675; Vice- and, through Trinity House, in monitoring
(16841686) President, 1699 its achievements
1703)
Jonas Moore Yes Yes Co-authored what was expected to be the
(16171679) (16741679) first major textbook for RMS students
Christopher Founder. Yes With Nicholas Hawksmoor and Robert
Wren President Hooke, designed the reconstruction of
(16321723) Christs Hospital after the Great Fire
(16801682)
Robert Hooke Yes Yes (from 1672), First Curator of Experiments of the Royal
(16351703) Secretary and gave lectures Society (16621677), and led practical
(16771682) to RMS students sessions for RMS students. Helped to
in the 1670s and design the reconstruction of Christs
1680s Hospital after the Great Fire
Isaac Newton Yes Yes Several early RMS masters had been
(16421727) President recommended by Newton. In 1694 Newton
commented extensively on RMSs
(17031727)
demanding curriculum
John Flamsteed Yes Yes Astronomer Royal (16751719) and patron
(16461719) (16771709) of James Hodgson (who, between 1696 and
1702, was Flamsteeds apprentice at the
Royal Observatory at Greenwich)
Edmond Halley Yes Edited Newtons Principia. Second
(16561742) (16781742) Astronomer Royal (17201742)
Humfrey Ditton ? Master of the New Master of the New Mathematical School
(16751715) Mathematical at Christs Hospital, 17061715
School, 1706
1715
James Hodgson Yes RMS master Flamsteeds assistant at the Greenwich
(16781755) (17031755) (17091755) Observatory, 16961702; RMS master,
17091755
John Robertson Yes RMS master Assisted James Hodgson in RMS (1748
(17121776) (17411776) (17481755) 1755), Master of RMS (1755); Head of the
(Librarian, Royal Naval Academy (at Portsmouth)
17681776) (17551766)
William Wales Yes RMS master RMS Master, 17761798
(17341798) (17761798) (17761798)
The Guiding Star: Samuel Pepys 27
In later chapters of this book we will argue that, ironically, the special contributions of
most of the stars whom we identify were not of lasting importance so far as RMSs influence
on the history of school mathematics is concerned. We will also argue that the person who
had the most influence in helping RMS become a significant force in the history of school
mathematics was possibly the least-remembered of the 10 starsnamely, James Hodgson.
The Guiding Star: Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys (16331703), as Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II
and King James II, had easy access to both monarchs. He is best known for his diary (see
Ollard, 1974; Pepys, 1995), and although that diary was written before he became Secretary
to the Admiralty (in June 1673), and before the establishment of the Royal Mathematical
School (in August 1673), it took account of details related to the Great Plague (1665), the
Fire of London (1666), and the Dutch attack on the Medway (1667)events which
precipitated moves to create RMS (Bell, 1924; Boxer, 1974; Haley, 1972; Jones, 2015).
Figure 3.1. Samuel Pepys in 1666. Pepys became Secretary to the Admiralty under King
Charles II and King James II ( National Portrait Gallery, London).
In the early 1660s Samuel Pepys had very little mathematical knowledge (Howson,
1982), and was not a seaman (Adams & Woodman, 2013; Kirk, 1935). Furthermore, he had
never been a schoolmaster or an education administrator. Entries in Pepyss (1995) diary
reveal that despite his having been educated at St Pauls School, London, and at the
University of Cambridge, he did not know his multiplication tablessee diary entries for
July 4, 10, 12, 18 in the year 1662. At one stage he felt the need to record that there were 12
inches in a footsee diary entry for June 9, 1663. But, despite his lack of mathematical
knowledge, and his apparent lack of relevant life experiences, he would become one of the
driving forces behind the development of RMS.
Between 1660 and 1673 Pepys held the influential position Clerk of the Acts to the
Navy Board, and in June 1673 he became Secretary of the Admiralty Commission, a
position he held during much of the reigns of Charles II and James II. As Clerk of the Acts to
the Navy Board he was officially responsible for the secretarial side of the Navy Board's
work and, when early in 1673 the offices of the Navy Board were destroyed by fire, he
worked from an office in Trinity House, an organization which had the responsibility of
providing good governance in navigation. In 1672 Pepys had been elected a Younger
Brother within Trinity House and when the Royal Mathematical Foundation at Christs
Hospital was established in 1673 he already had established strong and influential contacts
within Trinity House. That probably explains why Trinity House was accorded an important
evaluation role in the design of the RMS program. In 1676 Pepys was elected Elder, then
Master, of Trinity House, and he was also Master in 1685. His influence within Trinity
House enabled him to establish and maintain influence over key personnel in his quest to
establish RMS as an efficient educational body. Despite his close association with the
gentlemen of the Navy, Pepys was privately extremely critical of senior Navy personnel,
some of whom he regarded as wholly ignorant of the business of the sea (quoted in Tanner,
1926, p. 71).
Pepys was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1665 and served as its President
between 1684 and 1686. In 1705, two years after Pepyss death, the Continuator of Dr
Jeremy Colliers Supplement to Morerys Dictionary remarked that Pepys had devoted much
effort to preserving the RMS, which, because of Pepyss solicitations, had been instituted,
endowd, and cherishd by ... King Charles and King James II (quoted in Kirk, 1935, p. 54).
In standard accounts of the creation of RMS, the national crises mentioned in Chapter 2
of this book are outlined, and then government moves to establish RMS are explained in
terms of an urgent need to bolster the quality of navigation education in Great Britain (see,
e.g., Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834).
Of the many books and scholarly articles which offer commentaries on the life of
Samuel Pepys the most relevant so far as this book is concerned, are:
John Arbuthnots (1770). Miscellaneous works of the late Dr Arbuthnot (2 vols.);
Chapter 2, titled Samuel Pepys, in A. G. Howsons (1982) A history of mathematics
education in England.
Clifford Joness (2015) The sea and the sky: The history of the Royal Mathematical
School at Christs Hospital;
Rudolf Kirks (1935) Mr. Pepys upon the state of Christ-Hospitalnote that the
book title incorporates an incorrect name for the school;
The Morning Star: Jonas Moore 29
Nick Plumleys (1973, 1976) accounts of the early years of RMS; and
Frances Willmoths (1997a) edited collection, Flamsteeds stars: New perspectives
on the life of the first Astronomer Royal (16461719).
In the next chapter we provide more details of Pepyss influence on RMS. Here it suffices to
note that although we recognize his sincerity, and diligence, we will argue that his ideas on
education were often misguided and, indeed, that his educational energies were sufficiently
misplaced that he caused RMS to struggle within the period of his lifetime.
Pepys blamed othersand especially the RMS masters and members of the RMS
General Courtfor RMSs initial difficulties (Flecker, 1939). Thus, for example, in 1700, he
wrote of the ill state and worse government of Christs Hospital (quoted by Kirk, 1935, p.
54). Pepys went so far as to suggest that if a master sent a student to Trinity House for final
assessment and that student was failed by Trinity House, then the quarterly wage of the
master should be withheld until the student managed to pass (Christs Hospital, minutes of
the General Court, May 4, 1682).
We lay the heaviest burden of blame for the early difficulties of RMS squarely on
Pepys himself. In particular, we believe that his recommendation, in his 1677 list of
defects, that future RMS students should study Latin for 4 years, but mathematics for just
1 years (see Appendix A to this book), was unwisethe RMS boys were preparing to be
apprenticed as seamen, not academic scholars in classics or mathematics. Members of the
General Court must also bear responsibility for accepting this same recommendation.
That said, we shall also argue that some of the structural features in Pepyss vision for
RMS, such as the quality control which was to be exerted through Trinity House, enabled
RMS to recover and to become very important in the history of school mathematics in Great
Britain, in North America and, indeed, in the world.
The Morning Star: Jonas Moore

If Samuel Pepys was the star who guided RMS along a particular pathway, Jonas Moore
(16171679) was the morning star, the person who identified the pathway RMS would take
during its early years. Apparently it was Moore (see Figure 3.2), a favorite of King Charles II
(Allen, 1970), who, in 1673, persuaded the King to agree to create and to finance RMS.
Moore was born in Lancashire, the son of a well-to-do farmer, and in 1637 he was
appointed to a position requiring competence in the use of legal Latin. His particular bent,
however, was mathematics, and in 1647, after having been introduced to King Charles I, he
was appointed mathematical tutor to James, the Kings second son. Following the beheading
of Charles Is in 1649, Moore, who was known to have royalist leanings, quietly became a
teacher of mathematics (Laycock, 1901; Willmoth, 1993), and an author of an elementary
mathematics textbook (Moores Arithmetick). The book, which was published in 1650, not
only offered a full coverage of elementary abbaco arithmetic (Ellerton & Clements, 2012)
but also provided an introduction to algebra.
In the 1650s, Moore gained a reputation as a competent surveyor (Laycock, 1901;
Willmoth, 1993), and around 1660, with King Charles II now on the throne, he authored
A New Contemplation General upon the Ellipsis and Conical Sectionsand he dedicated
that book, and later editions of his Arithmetick, to his royal patrons.
Figure 3.2. Jonas Moore, around 1660. This image was from one of the preliminary pages of
the third edition of Moores Arithmetic (Moore, 1659) ( National Portrait Gallery, London).
Throughout the 1660s, Moore was back in favor and, as a result of the patronage of King
Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York (who had been tutored by Moore in
mathematics, and who would become King James II), Moore was appointed, in 1669, to the
coveted position of Surveyor General of the Ordnance. This was an important position which
gave him the influence he needed to create the Royal Observatory in Greenwich in 1675,
with John Flamsteed, his protg, as the first Astronomer Royal (Chalmers, 1817). Moore
was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1674, and quickly moved into its inner circle,
developing friendships with Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Although he had had a
hand in John Flamsteeds appointment at Greenwich he was not always impressed with
Flamsteeds work, and in July 1678, he threatened to stop Flamsteeds salary because, he
claimed, Flamsteed had not authored enough scientific works.
Moore described the first RMS master, John Leeke (sometimes spelled Leake), as an able
mathematician and my good friend. Leeke was well known to Moorehe had checked the
details of Moores Arithmetick and had had experience as a mathematics teacher. Furthermore,
Moore and Leeke had co-edited Euclids Elements of Geometry. Given these qualifications, it
would be difficult to sustain any assertion that Leeke would not have been appointed as RMS
master without Moores influence. General histories of Christs Hospital (e.g., Pearce, 1901;
Trollope, 1834) present Leeke as having been a total failure at RMS, and it is certainly true
that in 1677, in an enquiry into the work of RMS, he was criticized for not maintaining
discipline, and for spending too much time in a private closet giving tuition to boys from
outside the school (Iliffe, 1997, p. 121). At Leekes request, Moorewho had been
appointed a Governor of RMS in 1676prepared a Scheme of Rules relating to the topics
which needed to be covered in the RMS curriculum. Moore was asked to prepare a book
embodying the Committees recommendations in order that Leeke might have a certain
The Morning Star: Jonas Moore 31
Rule to walk by for ye future, the sayd Mr Leeke not having time to do ye same. In
December 1677 Leeke tendered his resignation as RMS master (Iliffe, 1997).
The list of qualifications for the position of RMS master that the 1677 Committee
stipulated was revealingthe master was to be sober, discreet, and diligent, and be well
versed in Greek and especially in Latin, so that the boys might converse with strangers
(quoted in Iliffe, 1997, p. 123). The Committee added that the master should be able to teach
a good hand, thereby enabling the boys to draw excellent geometricall schmes and
draughts, and that each should be an able and very good mathematician, well known in
theory and practise of all its parts, and soe ready even in the abstrusest, that no stranger from
abroad, or practitioners at home, shall be able to baffle him (quoted in Iliffe, 1997, p. 123,
from correspondence between Moore and Pepys). Moore also suggested that RMS boys
should not only attend special lectures and demonstrations at Gresham College, in London,
but should also be sent to study with John Flamsteed, at the Royal Observatory (Iliffe, 1997).
From a history-of-school-mathematics perspective, the most important contributions that
Moore made in the development of RMS arose from his willingness to convince Charles II
that the proposal to create RMS was sensible, and from the commitment he made to the 1677
Committee that he would prepare a book, based on the RMS curriculum, that could be used
by RMS boys. Although the resulting two-volume work, A New Systeme of the
Mathematicks, was shown as having been authored by Moore, it was authored jointly by
Moore, Peter Perkins, John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley. The two volumes appeared in
1681 (after Moores and Perkinss deaths in 1679 and 1680, respectively) (Allen, 1970).
Moores contribution covered arithmetic and algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and
cosmology. Six finely engraved star charts, and a section on The Doctrine of the Sphere,
were probably contributed by Flamsteed, a chapter on navigation and Euclids Elements by
Perkins, and a section on geography with maps and tables of longitude and latitude,
astronomy, logarithms, natural and artificial sines and tangents, by Halley (Allen, 1970).
In Chapter 5 of this present book it is argued that it was intended that A New Systeme of
the Mathematicks would become the basis for the development of a unique Christs Hospital
version of the cyphering tradition (Ellerton & Clements, 2012). It was intended that it be
used by RMS students when making entries into their all-important navigation cyphering
books (Ellerton & Clements, 2014). Apparently the reality did not match the intention.
Because of the high quality of its content and production, the book sold for the hefty price of
35 shillings and, according to Frances Willmoth (1993), it is doubtful whether it was much
used by RMS studentsalthough Isaac Newton recognized that it had been prepared for
RMS students (see Newton to Hawkes, May 26, 1694, in Turnbull, 1961, pp. 367368).
In 1674 a book with the title A mathematical compendium, or useful practices in
arithmetick, geometry and astronomy, geography and navigation, embattelling and
quartering of armies, fortification and gunnery, gauging and dyalling. Explaining the
logarithms, with indices; Nepairs (sic.) rods or bones; making of movements and the
applications of pendulums; with the projection of the sphere for an universal dyal, &c,
collected out of the notes and papers of Sir Jonas Moore by Nicholas Stephenson was
published and sold by Nathaniel Brooke in London. Later editions appeared in 1681, 1690
and 1705. These later editions indicated that the chapters had been written by Jonas Moore.
In a dedication to George Lord Dartmouth it was stated that the book had really been written
by Moore, but through the modesty of the learned author suffered it at first to peep out
under a borrowed name. That statement raises the questionif Moore had prepared
chapters on all of the topics mentioned in the title of the 1674 Compendium, then why did he
not quickly incorporate much of what he had written into A New Systeme of the
Mathematicks? Why did he prepare only the sections on arithmetic and algebra, geometry,
trigonometry, and cosmology for that book? On that issue, Frances Willmoth (1993, p. 87)
commented that the 1681 edition was swiftly (and wrongly) condemned as having been
falsely but surreptitiously ascribed to Moore, apparently because it threatened to divert
attention from his A New Systeme of the Mathematicks, which was also published in 1681.
Unlike Willmoth, we are not convinced that Moore actually wrote the material in any of
the editions of A Mathematical Compendium.
More details on Moores contributions to RMS will be provided in Chapter 4.
An Influential Star: Christopher Wren

Christopher Wren (16321723)see Figure 3.3was from a well-educated, wealthy
and influential family. His father (also Christopher Wren) was a rector and then a dean in the
Church of England. When he was young, Christopher Junior was, apparently, a playmate of
the Duke of Wales (later Charles II). Young Christopher attended Westminster School in
London, and while there sent at least one letter to his father in Latin. By the age of 20 he had
completed his B.A. degree at the University of Oxford and, soon after, in 1653, he was
awarded the Master of Arts degree (Jardine, 2003a; Tinniswood, 2001). By this time he had
already worked with William Oughtred, the famous mathematician, and had shown genuine
creativity in science, mathematics, art in various forms, and in the design of scientific
instruments. In 1657, at the age of 24, he was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Gresham
College, London. While at Gresham College he gave weekly lectures in both Latin and
English to all who wished to attendadmission was free.
Wren also met with a group comprising the founding members of the Royal Society.
Indeed, it was Wren who was the main speaker on November 28th, 1660, at a gathering at
which the Royal Society was foundedalthough it was not until 1662 that the Society
received the Royal Charter from King Charles II. At the first meeting of the Society, Wren
reported on a pendulum experiment that he had conducted, which was concerned with the
determination of a standard measure of length by the vibration of a pendulum (Weld, 1848).
This idea was incorporated into a proposal, put forward a few years later by another early
member of the Royal Society, Bishop John Wilkins (1668), for a universal system of weights
and measures which anticipated many of the main ideas of the metric system of weights
and measures which would be introduced in France in the 1790s (Clements & Ellerton,
2015). In putting forward his universal system for measurement, Wilkins acknowledged that
it was Wren who had first suggested that the determination of a standard measure of length
might be achieved by examining mathematical features of the oscillation of a pendulum
(Weld, 1848).
Between 1680 and 1682, Wren served as President of the Royal Society (Tinniswood,
2001). He was among a select group of outstanding savants, based largely in and around
London, Oxford, and Cambridge, who created opportunities to bounce ideas off each other
at a time when communication through books, papers and conferences was difficult.
An Influential Star: Christopher Wren 33
Figure 3.3. Portrait of Christopher Wren (c. 1690), by John Closterman

( National Portrait Gallery, London).
Between 1661 and 1673, when Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of
Oxford, Wren was sufficiently interested and productive in pure and applied aspects of
mathematics that Isaac Newton ranked him, together with John Wallis and Christiaan
Huygens, as one of the leading mathematicians of the day. But, during that period a decision
was made which would result in his enduring reputation being not in science or mathematics,
but in architecture. Following the Great Fire of London of 1666 he was appointed to be
Commissioner for Rebuilding the City of London and he is said to have supervised the
rebuilding of 51 churches as well as of many other buildings (Downes, 1982). One of the
churches was Christ Church, which was situated next to Christs Hospital and would become
that schools chapel. Wren, working with Robert Hooke and Nicholas Hawksmoor, also had
a hand in designing many of the new buildings in Christs Hospital itself (Pearce, 1901). The
end result was that the schools extensive grounds, and its buildings, located in the heart of
Londonclose to St, Pauls, Wrens masterpiecewere extraordinarily impressive (see
Figure 2.2). Later, in the 1670s, Wren would design and oversee the construction, at
Greenwich, of both the Royal Observatory and Greenwich Hospital. Wren became a member
of the Christs Hospital Committee around 1673.
As a governor of Christs Hospital, Wren strongly supported the creation and
development of RMS (Historical and Descriptive Notice of Christs Hospital, 1840,
November 28). That is not surprising considering his earlier close childhood link with the
Prince of Wales, who had become Charles II. Wren was a royalist through and through, and
much of his fame as an architect was achieved as a result of patronage. That is not to imply,
of course, that Wren was not an outstanding architectfor he was. The point is that Wren
was another influential Christs Hospital governor whose support for Samuel Pepys and
Jonas Moores RMS concept could be relied upon. Furthermore, because Wren was a staunch
supporter of the virtues of classical studies, he was another influential person who would be
expected to support the idea that RMS students needed to become efficient in reading,
writing, and speaking Latin.
Because Wren was such an outstanding scientist and mathematician himself, there was
the possibility that he might not be a good judge of the kind of mathematical studies that
ordinary boys up to the age of 16 years might reasonably be expected to learn. As we shall
see, there were other stars in the RMS firmament who, because of their own exceptional
individual brilliance, could also have had difficulty imagining and developing realistic
curricular expectations for RMS boys. Be that as it may, Wren was a highly influential star
undoubtedly, his influence over those who guided and directed RMS in its early years was
important.
An Unusual Star: Robert Hooke

Between 1662 and 1703 Robert Hooke (16351703) officially held the position of
Professor of Geometry at Gresham College in London (Espinasse, 1962). In 1665, he became
the Royal Societys first Curator of Experiments and between 1677 and 1682 he served as
Secretary of the Royal Society (Chapman, 2004; Jardine, 2003b). In November 1672 he
was consulted by Christs Hospital on who should be the first RMS master, and two weeks
later he became a governor of Christs Hospital (Taylor, 1954). In 1673 he was part of the
advisory search committee that selected the first RMS master, Mr John Leeke (Plumley,
1976). He often attended meetings of the General Court and the Committee of Almoners at
Christs Hospital.
Hookes period as Curator of Experiments of the Royal Society coincided with a time
when the designing and development of instruments were thought to be part and parcel of the
work of good scientists and mathematicians (Taylor, 1956). Although Hooke was in contact,
almost daily, with great scientists and mathematicians like Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and
Christopher Wren, until recently, he has been thought of as a relatively minor player in the
history of scientific development (Andrade & De, 1950). For centuries, now, students of
physics and applied mathematics have learned of Hookes law for elasticity, but the man
behind that law remained obscure. Some think that this happened because Hooke and Isaac
Newton were avowed enemiesapparently it was only after Hookes death, in 1703, that
Newton would agree to be President of the Royal Society (Espinasse, 1962). Hooke kept a
diary between August 1672 and May 1683, and transcripts of the almost-daily entries in the
diary for the period August 1672 through December 31, 1680 have been published (Robinson
& Adams, 1935). We are not showing an image of Hooke here because there is no image of
Hooke that one can confidently say was from Hookes time. Apparently, the official
portrait of Hooke was lost in 1703 when Isaac Newton became President of the Royal
Society, and the Society moved its offices (Espinasse, 1962).
In 1935 F. G. Hopkins, the President of the Royal Society, wrote, in his Foreword to
Robinson and Adamss (1935) The Diary of Robert Hooke:
An Unusual Star: Robert Hooke 35
Among Hookes inventions were the spring balance in watches, the anchor-
escapement, the wheel barometer, and improvements in the microscope, the
telescope, and the air-pump. He was the author of Hookes Law, and introduced
freezing point as zero on the thermometer scale. He was the first observer of two
stars in Orions belt and the first person to describe the cellular structure of plants.
In his theory of light and his theory of combustion he anticipated many modern
hypotheses. He came near to an understanding of universal gravitation, and many
have felt that with greater knowledge of mathematics he might even have
forestalled Newton. His Micrographia and Cutlerian Lectures are classics in
scientific literature, and he made decisive contributions to almost all branches of
science. (Quoted in Robinson & Adams, 1935, p. iv)
Hookes diary reveals that during the period 16731677 he often met and dined with
Christopher Wren or Jonas Moore, or both (see, for example, diary entries for August 19, 23,
27, 1674, September 5, 11, 18, 19, 22, 23, 1674; February 6, 8, 11, 18, 20, 24, 27, 1675; July
6, 1676, September 3, 1676). He met and dined with Samuel Pepys less often, but when he
did the subject of discussion was almost always the Royal Mathematical School at Christs
Hospital (see, for example, diary entries for July 11, 1676; August 28, 1676; December 19,
1676; December 18, 1676). The diary entries just cited, regarding meetings with Wren and
Pepys, represent only a small proportion of the meetings Hooke had with these and other
RMS stars. Hooke and Christopher Wren not only designed the RMS buildings at Christs
Hospitalthey also indicated where they should be located with respect to other Christs
Hospital buildings. He also discussed, with Moore, Wren, and Pepys, what the RMS
curriculum should be.
Hooke, seemed to believe that his design for a special badge to be worn by RMS
students had been accepted (see his diary entries for January 21st and January 23rd, 1674).
However, although the final form of the badge was not very different from that proposed by
Hooke, there is some doubt whether the final design was Hookes, or one submitted by John
Roettier (Barford, 2013; Jones, 2015).
Hooke conducted a seemingly never-ending sequence of innovative experiments on a
wide range of scientific topics in which he made use of brilliantly conceived instruments.
Many of the experiments were shown as demonstrations at meetings of the Royal Society,
but he also gave lectures and led workshops at Gresham College to RMS boys on scientific
and geometrical topics (Jones, 2015; Pearce, 1901). He served as a governor for Christs
Hospital, and as surveyor and architect for the rebuilding of Christs Hospital. In particular,
he designed and supervised the building of the Mathematical School, and assisted Wren with
the neighboring Christ Church (Espinasse, 1962). His diary entries were often tantalizingly
brief: for example, the entry for August 28th, 1676, noted that he had not attended to his
diary for a few days, but he recalled that he had been twice with Mr Pepys who was very
civill and kind, and he gave Pepys the module for Christchurch scuole (presumably he
meant, Christs Hospital) and he recommended Mercator. In writing that, it is likely that he
was thinking about a geometry module for the RMS curriculum, and that he wanted to
recommend a section on Mercators sailing be included in the RMS navigation curriculum.
Hookes central location in Londonhe lived at Gresham Collegeenabled him to
develop close relationships with many of the nations best scientists. His diary entry for
Tuesday March 16th, 1675, for example, stated that he went from the Attorney-Generals
office, and then spoke with Isaac Newton. The next day he noted that Newton was out of
towne. Soon after that (March 18th, 1676) Hooke read a paper to the Royal Society on the
propertyes of light, in which he explaind light and colours. Historians of science will
know that in the 1670s there arose a serious dispute between Hooke and Newton over the
nature and properties of lightthe point here is that in the middle of all this Hooke was
dealing with matters arising from his position as Governor of Christs Hospital. After reading
his paper on the properties of light on March 18th, 1675, Hooke recorded, in his diary, that
he was solicited by Mrs. Gringham for a place in the Hospitall, but refused her.
Although Robert Hooke was a fine mathematician, no-one in Great Britain could
compete mathematically with Isaac Newtonand it was with Newton that Hooke had a
major priority dispute over details in Newtons Principia (Jardine, 2003b). That said, Hooke
was a brilliant all-round scientist who had an almost unequalled genius for creating scientific
instruments and for designing illuminating experiments. As Curator of Experiments for the
Royal Society he showed how science and mathematics could be brought to the people
although Iliffe (1997) has argued that that role fell principally to those who lectured in
Londons coffee houses. Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that Hookes demonstrations
to learned members of the Royal Society, and to groups of students like those from the Royal
Mathematical School, were important in helping establish positive attitudes towards practical
education among the people. Despite Hookes reputation for having a fiery temper
(Espinasse, 1962), almost every day he found the time to drink coffee, or dine with,
scientists, mathematicians and administrators of the stature of Robert Boyle (the chemist),
Jonas Moore and John Wallis (mathematicians), and Samuel Pepys (the administrator).
Robert Hooke was not the only scholar to advise on the content and structure of the
RMS curriculum. Other contributions came from Jonas Moore, John Flamsteed, Edmond
Halley, John Wallis and Isaac Newton. Although few would deny the intellectual prowess of
these scholars, one wonders whether they could design programs suited to the needs and
abilities of students aged from 14 to 16 years. There was a second related, and equally
important, issue: were there any teachers capable of delivering the RMS curriculum in a way
which would enable RMS boys to benefit from the collective wisdom of the stars?
The Most Commanding Star: Isaac Newton

It is to Isaac Newtons credit that he found time to respond in meaningful ways to
Christs Hospitals requests for assistance with respect to RMS. At the beginning of 1697, for
example, he examined five RMS boys, and deemed them to be ready to begin their
apprenticeships at sea. As a governor of the school he was often present at meetings when
matters concerning RMS were discussed (Westall, 1980). However, we will argue that the
record suggests that he did not have a strong understanding of what was needed to develop a
successful RMS program.
On May 25, 1694, Isaac Newton sent a long, carefully crafted, letter to Nathaniel
Hawes, Treasurer of Christs Hospital, setting out his thoughts and judgments with respect to
a proposed new RMS curriculum which, he believed, had been drawn up by his protg
Edward Paget, who was the RMS master at that time. A transcript of the letter appears in
Appendix B to this book. Newton was extremely critical of what he called the old scheme,
and very positive about Pagets new curriculum. Relevant to the scenario, perhaps, was the
fact that 12 years earlier, in 1682, Newton had strongly recommended Pagets appointment
(Pearce, 1901).
According to Newton it was preposterous that the study of arithmetic had been
placed so late in the old scheme, because it ought to have been the foundation of all the rest
The Most Commanding Star: Isaac Newton 37
(quoted in Turnbull, 1961, p. 357). In the old scheme, decimals, vulgar fractions, and
logarithms had been listed as being required to be taught before ordinary whole-number
arithmetic; furthermore, logarithms of sines and logarithm tangents were listed before
logarithms themselves. Newton maintained that in the old scheme the treatment of Euclidean
geometry had been too brief, algebra had not been dealt with at all, and the expectations for
spherical trigonometry, sailing, longitude, and the doctrine of globes were ill conceived.
Furthermore, the principles of mechanics were not mentioned. Newton wrote that, by
contrast, Pagets scheme was methodical, short and comprehensive, and excelled the old
one beyond comparison. Indeed, it was close to perfect (p. 359).
In his May 25, 1694 letter to Hawes, Newton made a number of comments that had
strong implications not only for the implementation of a new RMS intended curriculum but
also for mathematics education in general. He compared navigation education in France
unfavorably with that provided in the Royal Mathematical School. For one thing, he
maintained that the French, by concentrating on navigation education for older students,
delayed the introduction of important navigation principles for too long. He wrote:
Theirs [i.e., Frances] are young men whose faculties for learning begin to be as
stiff and inflexible as their bones, and whose minds are prepossest (sic.) and
diverted with other things; yours are children whose minds are limber and pliable
and free to receive all impressions. A great part of their schools are scarce capable
of much better learning than that in your old scheme; yours have already shown
by experience that they are capable of all the learning in the new one ... (p. 360)
Newtons claim that RMS had established a fairly successful program was debatable, but on
another matter he was definitely right. The old RMS mathematics curriculum comprised
much sophisticated mathematics and, given the amount of time students were allowed to
remain in the program, it was doubtful whether it was reasonable to expect the students to
learn it. Newton was concerned that an already serious lack of allocated curriculum time
would be exacerbated under the new scheme. He argued that the new scheme would require
more than two years of full-time study, and claimed that four or five years for this new
scheme would be but a moderate allowance (p. 361). He added that perhaps it might be
possible to complete the course over three years, but anything less than that would send the
students away smatterers in their learning (p. 361). Furthermore, he argued that any
decision to allow too brief a time provided the RMS master with an excuse for why his
students were not learning well what they were supposed to learn.
At that time Newton was based at the University of Cambridge, and was not really well
informed about the RMS situation. On the 26th May 1694, the day after he had sent the
above-mentioned letter to Hawes, he sent another letter to Hawes explaining that the old
system that he had criticized so harshly was the one in place between 1673 and 1682, before
Jonas Moores (1681) A New Systeme of the Mathematicks had been released (p. 367). It
seems that within a period of 24 hours, Newton had come to realize that even he might be
deemed to be behaving in a politically incorrect way if he dared to criticize severely a system
established by Jonas Moore. According to Newtons revised statement, the existing approach
in Moores (1681) A New Systeme of the Mathematicks was not very different in its approach
from that which was recommended in Pagets new scheme. If that were indeed the case, then
one ought to wonder why there was so much fuss about introducing a system largely set out
in the book written by Jonas Moore, with contributions by Peter Perkins, John Flamsteed and
Edmond Halley. But in fact Paget, who was often absent from Christs Hospital during his
period as RMS master, never implemented the revised curriculum that had been presented in
Moores (1681) bookprobably because, in June 1682, the General Court of Christs
Hospital had made it a condition of Pagets appointment as RMS master that he agree to
teach the old curriculum. Newtons support for Pagets new scheme was not enough to keep
Paget at RMS. Paget resigned his position, in 1694, not long after Newton had sent his letters
to Hawes.
Isaac Newton (16421727), Lucasian professor of the mathematical sciences at the
University of Cambridge between 1663 and 1701, and an elected Governor of Christs
Hospital, had always been, and would continue to be, consulted whenever a new master of
RMS was being appointed. He strongly supported the appointments of Edward Paget (RMS
master between 1682 and 1694) and Humfrey Ditton (master of the New Mathematical
School at Christs Hospital between 1706 and 1715), and did not oppose the appointment of
Samuel Newton, RMS master between 1695 and 1708but each of those three appointments
was not obviously successful (Jones, 2015; Pearce, 1901). Furthermore, in 1709, Newton
preferred William Jones over James Hodgson, but Hodgson was appointed and proved to be
a successful master for most of his 46 years in office. One might conclude, fairly we believe,
that although Newtons credentials as an outstanding mathematician cannot be questioned, he
was not a good judge of the kind of person who was needed to make an effective teacher of
mathematics to RMS boys aged between 14 and 16 years.
Newton (see Figure 3.4) also recommended the use of mathematics textbooks written in
Latin, stating: I like well the designe of establishing some Latin authors to be read in the
schoole, because the best mathematicall books are in that language, & by useing the boys to
mathematicall Latin, they will be enabled to understand them. The Synopsis Algebraica and
Wards Trigonometry are well chosen, and soe is Euclides nova methodo in regard of the
short time allowed of the boys (quoted in Turnbull, 1961, p. 364).
Despite his call for greater attention to Latin in the RMS program, Newton was
concerned that RMS boys might spend too much time studying Latin and not enough time
studying mathematics. He wrote that were it not for some mathematical books in Latine, I
should think that language of soe little use to a seaman as not to deserve four or five years of
the childrens time, while mathematics are allowed but two (quoted in Scott, 1967, p. 132).
Isaac Newtons comments on mathematics education were sufficiently questionable to
suggest that outstanding mathematical ability is not necessarily the most important
qualification needed to give wise counsel on matters concerning school-level mathematics.
Almost all of the RMS students were not more than 16 years of age, and very few, if any, of
them were extraordinarily talented in mathematics. The school expected them to learn
numerous topicslike decimals, logarithms, plain and spherical trigonometry, Euclidean
geometry, various kinds of sailing, and mensurationin a mere 18 months, despite the fact
that they had never studied any of those topics before entering RMS. Furthermore, the school
expected RMS students to meet standards set by external assessors from Trinity House. Isaac
Newton, at first in his cloistered, research-oriented world at the University of Cambridge, but
later in his residence at the Royal Mint in London, knew nothing of the kinds of curricular
and pedagogical pressures that would be experienced by mathematics masters at RMS. Like
Pepys, and most other commentators on the RMS program at that time, he thought that the
students should learn some of their mathematics from textbooks written in Latin.
The Star-Finder: John Flamsteed 39
Figure 3.4. Portrait of Isaac Newton, by Godfrey Kneller, 1702

From a modern mathematics education perspective, both the new and old RMS
intended curriculum and assessment schemes seemed to be too difficult and too longand
therefore doomed to failure (Ellerton & Clements, 2015). Yet, people outside real school
classroomslike Samuel Pepys, Jonas Moore, and Isaac Newtonnever seemed to realize
that the curricular expectations set by Trinity House were sufficiently unrealistic that only an
incredibly talented teacher would have had any chance of helping students achieve the
required standards. Before James Hodgsons period as master, the early mathematics masters
at RMS were mathematically well qualified but not necessarily talented teachers.
The Star-Finder: John Flamsteed

In 1675, after a not-wholly-successful academic preparation which included several years
at the University of Cambridge, John Flamsteed (16461719) was ordained a clergyman within
the Church of England. But his calling lay outside of the Church, for in 1670 his talents as an
astronomer had been recognized by Jonas Moore. Helped by Moores patronage, in 1675
Flamsteed was appointed the first Astronomer Royal, and in 1676 he moved into the
recently-completed Royal Observatory at Greenwich. He lived there for the rest of his life,
dedicating himself to the study of star constellations and of the moon. In an age before the
problem of determining longitude at sea had been solved (Sobel, 1995), it was commonly
believed that the best chance of unraveling the difficulties faced by navigators who were
attempting to locate their ships positions lay in detailed study of patterns associated with the
stars and the moon. Astronomy was thereby linked to navigation, and therefore it was
assumed that anyone appointed to the position of Astronomer Royal should have the
responsibility of improving navigation and, therefore, navigation education (Figure 3.5).
Figure 3.5. Portrait of the Reverend John Flamsteed (16461719), by John Simon (1719),
after Thomas Gibson (1712) ( National Portrait Gallery, London).
Between 1670 and 1675, Jonas Moore helped Flamsteed to establish his credentials as
an astronomer. In 1674, Moore offered to establish a private observatory for Flamsteed at
Chelsea College, but that was not needed because King Charles II heeded Moores advice
and appointed Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal. Moore furnished him with a micrometer,
lenses and two clocks, and those were the only instruments he had when he began his work
in the new Greenwich Observatory. In the absence of funding for necessary equipment,
Flamsteed was lent instruments by friends and patronslike Jonas Mooreand he also
purchased equipment out of his own money (Willmoth, 1993). In order to supplement his
meagre income as Astronomer Royal he took in private, fee-paying pupils, including RMS
students.
Although Flamsteed proved to be a brilliant and determined astronomer, he preferred to
guard his data from other scholars until he had published whatever conclusions he wanted to
make with respect to his interpretations of those data. He was elected Fellow of the Royal
Society in 1677, but lost favor with Jonas Moore, who believed that the precocious Edmond
Halley was establishing a better publishing record than Flamsteed (for details, see Forbes,
1975, pp. 642646). Flamsteed proceeded to establish a superb data set, but resisted the
temptation to go into print until he felt confident that his interpretations of his data would be
fully justified.
The Star-Finder: John Flamsteed 41
As Astronomer Royal, Flamsteed devised a new method for measuring the altitudes of
stars as they passed the meridian, but his unwillingness to share his findings led to
controversy, because both Isaac Newton and Edmond Halley wanted access to his full data
set. Newton and Halley reasoned that they were entitled to such access because Flamsteed
had gathered the data while working as Astronomer Royal and was therefore being paid his
salary from the public purse. Flamsteed countered that argument by pointing out that the
observations had been made with instruments that he had purchased or had been given. In
1712, Halley actually published a paper analyzing observations that Flamsteed had made
but Flamsteed managed to get his hands on 300 of the 400 printed copies of Halleys paper
and ceremoniously burned all 300. Six years after Flamsteeds death, his classic Historia
Coelestis Britannica (Flamsteed, 1725) was published. It listed details of about 3000 stars that
he had observed and studied.
As a Governor of Christs Hospital, Flamsteed contributed to the development of RMS
in important ways. Thus, for example, around 1680 he helped RMS avert a potentially
embarrassing situation by agreeing to write sections of the textbook A New Systeme of the
Mathematickswhich history records as having been written by Jonas Moore. In 1677,
Moore had agreed to write a textbook specifically aimed at RMS students, but he died in
August 1679 without having made much progress. Peter Perkins, master of RMS, took on the
task of completing the book, but he died in December 1680 before it was complete. The book
would probably never have been completed without the help of Flamsteed and Edmond
Halley. The title page for Volume 2 attributed the contents to Jonas Moorebut, in fact, the
sections in that volume had been prepared entirely by Flamsteed and Halley.
At the Royal Observatory, Flamsteed received two RMS boys each month for training
in astronomy, and he complained that he was not recompensed for this (Jones, 2015). He is
said to have tutored 140 privately-paying students, many of whom went on to take up naval
careers (Stewart, 1997; Turner, 1990). He employed assistants to help him, not only with his
astronomical observations and analyses but also with his teaching of private students. Three
of his assistants, Edmond Halley, James Hodgson and Thomas Weston, were destined to
make large contributions to mathematics, navigation and astronomy. Halleys and Hodgsons
contributions to RMS will be summarized later in this chapter.
James Hodgson lived at Greenwich and served as Assistant Astronomer Royal to
Flamsteed between 1696 and 1702. He married Flamsteeds niece. Hodgson and Flamsteed
would remain close friends and professional colleagues even after Hodgson left the
Greenwich Observatory in 1702. After Flamsteeds death, Atlas Coelestis was faithfully
edited by Margaret Flamsteed, Flamsteeds widow, and James Hodgson (Flamsteed,
Flamsteed, & Hodgson, 1729). Thomas Weston left his position as Assistant Astronomer
Royal to become head of the Greenwich Academy, a private school which took students from
families within Greenwich Hospital. Westons work in his Academy was sufficiently
impressive that both his and Flamsteeds portraits were painted on the ceiling of Greenwich
Hospitals magnificent Painted Hall (Turner, 1980, 1990; Willmoth, 1997a).
During his time as Astronomer Royal, Flamsteed was a controversial character
(Willmoth, 1997b). His patron, Jonas Moore, had engineered his appointment as Astronomer
Royal, but in the second half of the 1670s Moore was not always satisfied with Flamsteeds
work in the Observatory. More seriously, Flamsteed managed to quarrel with David Gregory
(Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford), with Robert Hooke, with
Isaac Newton, and with his former protg, Edmond Halley (Baily, 1835; Bennett, 1997; Cook,
1997; Willmoth, 1997b). Naturally, his disputes with such people have been the subject of
much analysis in accounts of his life and work (see, e.g., Willmoth, 1997a, 1997b). The
emphasis, here, however, is on Flamsteeds contributions to RMS, and from that perspective
it is significant that in April 1697 it was the Astronomer Royal to whom an ageing Samuel
Pepys desperately turned for advice on how RMS could be improved (Kirk, 1935).
Flamsteed told Pepys that RMS needed as its master an outstanding scholar who was
also an outstanding teacher. In order to be successful, the master needed to help the students
learn to apply the principles of navigation and astronomy. According to Flamsteed, RMS
graduates should not only be able to identify which calculations needed to be made at various
stages of a ships journey, but also be able to perform those calculations with speed
and accuracy. Ordinary sailors who did not know the relevant mathematics would not be able
to do that (Iliffe, 1997). Flamsteed had tried to show the mathematics which might be needed
in his contribution to A New Systeme of the Mathematicksthe textbook, usually attributed to
Jonas Moore. But, as Flamsteed emphasized to Pepys, having a strong intended curriculum,
with an adequate textbook, was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the success of
RMS. What was also needed was an outstanding teacher who not only had a strong grasp of
the mathematics but was also able to help ordinary boys aged not more than 16 to
understand it. In 1697 RMS had been operating for almost 25 years yet such a teacher had
never been found. Pepys reflected on the possibility that such a teacher did not exist in all of
Great Britain.
When Pepys died in 1703, the situation at RMS had not improved. The RMS master at
that time was Samuel Newton (unrelated to Isaac), and like previous RMS masters he was
finding it difficult to cope with his teaching commitments at Christs Hospital. Unlike Isaac
Newton, Flamsteed had warned against the appointment of Samuel Newton in the first place,
referring to him as unknown, and commenting that such an appointment could ruin the
school (Iliffe, 1997; Wigelsworth, 2010). But despite Flamsteeds comments, Samuel
Newton was duly appointed and he was RMS master for almost 14 years. Finally, early in
1709 he was dismissed, and his replacement was James Hodgson, a protg of Flamsteed.
Undoubtedly, Flamsteeds biggest contribution to RMS was the careful and expert
training he gave James Hodgson who, it will be argued in Chapter 6 of this book, saved RMS
from impending closure, and managed, almost single-handedly, to lift Christs Hospital to an
exulted position among schools offering instruction in mathematics (Dickinson, 2007; Hans,
1951a, 1951b).
The Shooting Star: Edmond Halley

The intellectually precocious Edmond Halley (16561742) was from a privileged
family. After several years as a student at the University of Oxford, he travelled to unlikely
places to gather astronomical data, and at the age of 22 was awarded, by royal decree, an
M.A. from the University of Oxforddespite his not having completed the normal degree
program. In 1778 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Societyone of the youngest
Fellows ever elected to that Society.
During his undergraduate years, Halley (see Figure 3.6) worked as an assistant to John
Flamsteed at the Greenwich Observatory and, many years later, in 1720 he succeeded
Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal. That appointment was the final twist, in a much publicized
and often turbulent relationship between the ultra-careful, conservative, but brilliant
Flamsteed, and the equally brilliant but outgoing, daring, and skeptical Edmond Halley
(Cook, 1997). During the years between his early work with Flamsteed at the Observatory
and his appointment as Astronomer Royal, Halley was a sea captain, a friend of Isaac
The Shooting Star: Edmond Halley 43
Newton, and a skeptic so far as orthodox religion was concerned (Wakefield, 2005). His sea
voyages took him far into the southern hemisphere, but he failed to generate the data which
would enable him to confirm his radical theory of magnetism. However, he was not afraid to
venture where other scientists had feared to tread. In 1705, for example, he noted similarities
between the orbits of comets observed in 1531, 1607, and 1682 and suggested that in fact
they came from the same cometwhich would return every 76 years. He correctly predicted
that the comet, now known as Halleys comet, would return in 1758.
Earlier, in 1695, Halley applied for the position of master of RMS, Flamsteed
maintained, in a comment written in the margin of a letter to Isaac Newton, that Halley
understands little of ye business and his ill morals & abusing religion has been objected
to (quoted in Iliffe, 1997, p. 137). Halley did not secure the position, despite his having been
recommended by Samuel Pepys. Apparently, Pepys was more interested in a prospective
RMS masters mathematical and navigational abilities than in whether his religious beliefs
were approved in high society. Halley may have failed to win an appointment as RMS
master, but he successfully edited Newtons (1687) Philosophiae Naturalis Principia
Mathematica, and in 1703 he was appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at the
University of Oxford. He taught himself the Arabic language, and in 1706 completed a
translation of Books 58 of Apolloniuss Conics (Fried, 2011).
Figure 3.6. Portrait of Edmond Halley, c. 1687, by Thomas Murray ( Royal Society).
Halley had a close relationship with Peter Perkins before Perkins became RMS master
in 1679. Perkins, Robert Hooke, and Halley often met at a coffee house, and around that time
Flamsteed, Halley and Perkins jointly carried out observations at the Royal Observatory
(Feingold, 1997; Iliffe, 1997). After Perkins death, at the end of 1680, Flamsteed accused
Halley of making use of Perkins data without full acknowledgement (Feingold, 1997). There
could have been some truth in Flamsteeds accusation for it is known that some weeks after
Perkinss death Halley purchased data from Perkins widow (Cook, 1997; Feingold, 1997).
After Peter Perkins death, in 1680, Halley and Flamsteed combined to complete the
RMS textbook, A New Systeme of the Mathematicks. Their contributions complemented
sections already completed by Jonas Moore and Perkins. Halleys long section in the second
volume of that textbook was concerned with geography, and included numerous maps which
he himself had drawn (Wallis, 1978). Soon after that, Halley served as external examiner to
RMS students (Iliffe, 1997). Halley obviously had some close associations with RMS, and he
felt sufficiently positive about it to apply for the position of RMS master. There can be little
doubt that he became fully aware of the structure and content of RMSs curriculum.
Ultimately, his contributions to RMS were not as important as those of Jonas Moore or
Samuel Pepys or Isaac Newton, but he was always willing to help when needed.
The Falling Star: The Outsider, Humfrey Ditton

The life of Humfrey Ditton (16751715), including his work at Christs Hospital, might
be described as tragic. Ditton studied theology, and was for some years a dissenting
minister before he decided to devote himself to teaching and demonstrating mathematics on
the coffee-house circuit in London (Iliffe, 1997; Stewart, 1999, 2001). During the first
decade of the eighteenth century he wrote numerous high-level mathematical and scientific
papers, some of which were based on Newtonian mechanics. In 1705 and 1706, for example,
he wrote General Laws of Nature and Motion (1705)see Figure 3.7, and Principia of Newton:
An Institution of Fluxions, Containing the First Principles, Operations, and Applications of
that Admirable Method, as Invented by Sir Isaac Newton (1706). These publications were well
received by mathematicians and, late in 1706, with the support of Sir Isaac Newton, Ditton
was appointed head of the New Mathematical School (hereafter NMS) at Christs Hospital
(Guicciardini, 2003; Willmoth, 1993). He remained head of NMS until his death in 1715.
Ditton was never really a star in the RMS firmament, for his work was with NMS,
which was never formally part of RMS. Willmoth (1993) pointed out that although Ditton
briefly served as temporary master of RMS, at no stage was he ever interested in being
appointed permanently to a mastership of the Royal Foundation. For Ditton, as for Isaac
Newton and John Arbuthnot (1770), the NMS program was directed at getting students to
understand reasons for rules, rather than merely learning to apply rules (Arbuthnot, 1770).
For Ditton, his NMS represented a move towards mathematics beyond arithmetic, and his
educational ideals were not guided by a need to link the mathematics to navigation. Isaac
Newton had always agreed with that approach, but Samuel Pepys had not (Davies, 2008).
Before 1705 the move to create an additional mathematics school at Christs Hospital
had not been the subject of serious discussion, but once the idea was put forward it gathered
momentum quickly. According to the minutes of the meeting of the Committee of Almoners
of Christs Hospital held on March 1st, 1706, a scheme of learning had been drawn up by
Mr Harris and approved by Sir Isaac Newton for a new mathematicall school ... in the
Hospitall. The proposal specified that the new school would be for 40 or 50 boyssome
The Falling Star: The Outsider, Humfrey Ditton 45
for the sea, and others for land employments. At a meeting of the Committee of Almoners
of May 3rd, 1706, the scheme was highly approved of, and at the Committee meeting held
on June 14, 1706 it was agreed that:
The number of boyes to be instructed in this School shall not exceed 50 at one
time, and that 25 or 30 of them shall be taken in at first and the rest as
occasion shall serve.
None of the boyes shall be at any time removed into King Charles the
Seconds Foundation.
The schoolmasters salary should be 80 pounds and besides a dwelling house.
The minutes recorded that the Committee immediately went into the room intended for the
school, and after view thereof, were of opinion that the room may do without any other
alteration than putting it into repair. It was also decided that all NMS students should wear a
special badgewhose design would differ from the badge worn by RMS boys. The
Committee quickly agreed to a recommendation that Humfrey Ditton be the first master of
NMS. According to Iliffe (1997), Dittons appointment at Christs Hospital was procured
for him by Isaac Newton (p. 144).
By order of the Committee of Almoners meeting of October 24th, 1706, 35 boys already
in the Writing School at Christs Hospital were put into NMS at once. The oldest of these
boys was 15, and the youngest 12with 26 of the 35 being 12 or 13 years of age. Humfrey
Ditton took up his appointment as master of NMS officially on November 14th, 1706.
Apparently, some of the boys placed in NMS did not like the idea, for at a meeting of the
Committee of Almoners on December 20th, 1706, it was reported that there were now only
30 boys in NMS. At that meeting the Almoners decided to increase the number of NMS boys
to 50 by taking boys from both the Grammar and the Writing schools.
Figure 3.7. Title page, Humphrey Dittons (1705). The General Laws of Nature and Motion.
Mr Dittons early work in NMS seemed to be well regarded, for on September 25,
1707, the minutes of the Committee of Almoners stated that an external examiner had
certified that the first group of NMS students were well qualified, as can be expected, and
some of them in particular, and he hoped that they would receive all the encouragement the
Foundation can give them. Mr Ditton actively went about establishing NMS, obtaining
permission from the School to revise, translate from Latin to English, and extend a book on
algebra to be used by his students (Alexander, 1709; Ditton, 1709). The same book,
originally written in Latin by the Swiss mathematician Johannes Alexandri, had been
published, in Latin, by Christs Hospital in 1693 (Alexandri, 1693). Ditton also persuaded the
Almoners to purchase for NMS a pair of mounted globes (minutes of Committee of
Almoners, December 19th. 1707).
On March 26th, 1708, Mr Joseph Raphson, external examiner to NMS reported to the
Committee of Almoners:
Having examined the boyes of Mr Dittons school in the following parts of the
Mathematicks, viz. arithmetick, integers, vulgar and decimal fractions, elemental
geometry, arithmeticall and geometricall progressions, plain trigonometry,
algebra, and conical sections, &c, I find their proficiency to be in the generall
answerable to what can be expected, for the respective times they have been in
the school, except three or four of the lowest who are still very backward.
In his reports to the Committee of Almoners (dated September 16th, 1708, April 15th, 1709,
April 4th, 1710, and September 25th, 1712) Mr Raphson added spherical trigonometry,
orthographic and stereographic projection, principles of mechanics, equilibrium of liquids,
algebraical geometry, solid geometry, mensuration of solids, navigation, and geodesics to the
list of topics on which he had examined NMS students. In each report he reported favorably
on the progress of the students.
Slowly, however, the reputation of Mr Ditton was diminished within the Christs
Hospital environment. The following particularly embarrassing incident was reported in the
minutes of the Committee of Almoners for May 4th, 1711:
Mr Humfrey Ditton, master of the New Mathematical School, made a complaint
to this Committee against Mrs Walker, one of the Hospital nurses, for her
discouraging the children of her ward and their parents from entering into his
school, and for uttering reflecting words against him, as that no boy can be put
into his school without he is bribed, or words to that effect. She being called was
asked what she had to say to those accusations. She at first seemed to plead
ignorance, but afterwards begd pardon for what she had said, and promised never
to concern herself any more about anything of this nature; and thereupon the
committee, after reproving of her, advised her to keep her promise that there may
be no occasion of bringing her before them for the like offence.
This excerpt reflects the fact that the number of boys wanting to enter Dittons NMS
diminished steadily, whereas that was not the case for boys wishing to enter RMS.
Dittons failure to attract students to NMS must have been a bitter pill for him to
swallow. It seems likely that he gained some solace from his difficult work situation by
writing advanced academic papers. Among the treatises he wrote during his tenure at NMS
were:
Of the Tangents of Curves, published in Philosophical Transactions 1707 vol. xxiii;
The Shining Star: James Hodgson 47
A Treatise on Spherical Catoptrics, published in the Philosophical Transactions

vol. xxiv, from which it was reprinted in the Acta Eruditorum (1707), and also in the
Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences at Paris [in Latin];
The New Law of Fluids; Or, a Discourse Concerning the Ascent of Liquids, in
Exact Geometrical Figures, Between Two Nearly Contiguous Surfaces (1714); and
Discourse on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1714).
He also contributed a lengthy appendix to the 1709 Christs Hospital publication of Johannes
Alexanders A Synopsis of Algebra, Being the Posthumous Work of John Alexander, of Bern.
Ditton also found a form of escape from his daily NMS grind through his partnership
with the mathematician William Whiston. Whiston and Ditton were confident that they
would secure the so-called longitude prize of 20,000 pounds offered by the Board of
Longitude. Although the method developed by Whiston and Ditton had, apparently, been
approved by Isaac Newton before being presented to the Board of Longitude, and had
yielded good results in trials, the Board was not impressed. Ditton was bitterly disappointed.
He died in October 1715, and was buried in the cloisters of Christs Hospital. The minutes of
the next meeting of the Committee of Almoners recorded the fate of NMS in an
uncompromising way:
The New Mathematical School hath in no sort answered the intent and design of
its original foundation and by experience hath been and is found altogether
useless and burdensome to the House and therefore not proper to be continued.
The next section will summarize the work of James Hodgsonthe star who, from our
perspective, shone the brightest of all RMS stars. Hodgson, who was well known for his
outstanding teaching skills (Stewart, 2001), was at Christs Hospital during the last six years
of Dittons tenure at the school, and it is likely that an important part of Dittons problems
arose from his having to compete for students with a master teacher like Hodgson.
The Shining Star: James Hodgson

Although James Hodgson (see Figure 3.8) never studied at a university, the fact that he
was Christopher Wrens nephew (Baily, 1835; Bennett, 1982) suggests that family
upbringing would have provided him with an inclination towards academic pursuits.
Hodgson would attribute his impressive knowledge of mathematics to John Flamsteed, the
first Astronomer Royalwith whom he lived at the Greenwich Royal Observatory between
1695 and 1702. In 1701, John Flamsteed evaluated Hodgson in the following way:
A sober young man about 22 years of age. a very good geometrician and algebraist
[who] understands the series and fluxions tho I have not suffered him to spend
much time in them because I could not spare him from the calculation work. He
understands the Latin tongue indifferently, haveing got [it] since he became my
servant. He knows my method and is acquainted with all my labors and will easily
finish and print them if God should call me hence before I shall have perfected
them myself. (Royal Greenwich Observatory papers, RGO 1/33, folio 173)
The final words in this statement were prophetic, for in 1725 Flamsteeds widow and
Hodgson edited, and brought to publication, Flamsteeds (1725) Historia coelestis
Britannicai; and, a few years later, they edited Atlas Coelestis by the late John Flamsteed
(Flamsteed, Flamsteed & Hodgson, 1729). In October 1702at about the same time as he
moved from Greenwich to LondonHodgson married Ann Heming, Flamsteeds niece, who
had also been living at the Observatory. Hodgson had done outstanding work with Flamsteed
(Willmoth, 1997c) and although that preliminary part of his life had come to a close, the
Flamsteed/Hodgson connection would live on strongly, each remaining a faithful and loyal
friend to the other.
Figure 3.8. Portrait of James Hodgson (16781755) by George White, after Thomas Gibson,
c. 1720 ( National Portrait Gallery, London).
In London, it did not take long for Hodgson to become known as an outstanding teacher
of mathematics and demonstrator of instruments designed to reveal important mathematical,
astronomical, and scientific principles (Taylor, 1954). In 1703, on Flamsteeds
recommendation, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and by about 1705 his
reputation as a lecturer on the busy but crowded London coffee-house circuit was
unsurpassed (Iliffe, 1997; Stewart, 1999; Taylor, 1954). Some idea of his creativity,
persuasiveness and energy can be gleaned from the following newspaper advertisement for a
lecture course that would begin in January 1705. The advertisement appeared in the Daily
Courant, on December 9, 1704.
For the Advancement of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, as well as for the
benefit of all such curious and inquisitive gentlemen as are willing to lay the best
and surest foundation for all useful knowledge. There is provided engines for
condensing and rarafying (sic) air, with all their appurtenances (according to Mr
The Shining Star: James Hodgson 49
Hauksbees improvements). Microscopes of the best contrivance, telescopes of a

convenient length, with micrometers adapted to them, prisms, barometers,
thermometers, and utensils proper for hydrostatical experiments, with such other
instruments as are necessary for a course of experiments, in order to prove the
weight and elasticity of the air, its usefulness in the propagation of sound, and
conservation of life. The pressure of gravitation of fluids upon each other; also, the
new doctrine of lights and colours, and several other matters relating to the same
subjects, by James Hodgson, Fellow of the Royal Society. All gentlemen that are
willing to encourage so great an undertaking, or are willing to be benefited by it,
must subscribe two Guineas, one to be paid at the time of subscription, the other
two months after the course begins, which will be Monday the 8th January next, at
Mr Mores (formerly Coll Ayers) at the Hand and Pen of St. Pauls Church-yard,
where subscriptions are taken in; likewise at Mr Hauksbees in Giltspur Street,
within Newgate, at Mr Rowleys, under St. Dunstans Church, Fleet Street, and Mr
Senexs Bookseller next the Fleece Tavern in Cornhill, where proposals at large
may be seen. (Quoted in Wigelsworth, 2010, p. 90)
Around this time, Hodgson busied himself in the preparation of a book, The Theory of
Navigation Demonstrated (Hodgson, 1706), and he also worked hard, not only at improving
his ability to read, write and speak Latin, but also at becoming fluent with Isaac Newtons
fluxions and with Newtons theory of mechanics.
All of the above provided an admirable preparation for the position of master of RMS,
a position which became vacant in December 1708, following the resignation of Samuel
Newton. Hodgson was appointed to that position early in 1709, being chosen from a field
which included William Jones, a well-regarded mathematician whose application for the
position was supported by Isaac Newton, and Edmond Halley. Hodgson would spend the
next 46 years as master of RMS.
Details of Hodgsons work will not be given herethey are reserved for Chapter 6.
It will be in order to state here, though, that a major thesis in this book is that it was Hodgson
who vindicated the faith of Samuel Pepys in the possible viability of the radical model that
RMSs creation, in 1673, represented. Furthermore, it will be argued that the amazing
fruitfulness of Hodgsons work has not been recognized in general histories of Christs
Hospital (see, e.g., Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834). Nor has it been recognized by mathematics
educators who have studied the history of school mathematics in the United Kingdom (see,
e.g., Howson, 1982). It was recognized, however, by Nicholas Hans (1951a, 1951b),
a comparative educationist, and by historians of education such as Robert Iliffe (1997), Larry
Stewart (2001), and Frances Willmoth (1997a).
Like Hans (1951a, 1951b), we shall argue that the importance of Hodgsons successes
at Christs Hospital ultimately lay less in what he achieved within Christs Hospital itself, but
more in the fact that other schools, in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, and North
America, in attempting to emulate what was achieved in RMS, began to offer mathematics
beyond mere arithmetic to the peopleand not just to children of the elite.
That is why we have called Hodgson the shining star, the star who shone the
brightest and longest in the RMS firmament. He not only lit the pathway for the future of
school mathematics at Christs Hospital but also showed how it could be traversed by others.
The Supporting Star: John Robertson

Towards the end of his life James Hodgson needed someone to help him keep up with
the heavy demands of his teaching and administrative duties as RMS master at Christs
Hospital. He was old, and in Chapter 6 we provide evidence which demonstrates that his
earlier great powers as a dynamic teacher had almost disappeared. He had acquired a
reputation for being absent-mindeda reputation which, incidentally, has been passed on in
Christs Hospital publications as something which applied to the whole of his tenure at RMS
(see, e.g., Committee of Old Blues, 1953, which states (p. 34) that Hodgsons absent-
mindedness rendered him generally at a disadvantage with his sturdy and lawless
pupils). After about 1745 Hodgson probably should have retired, but he did not. He chose to
ask the school to help him keep going.
The minutes of Christs Hospital Committee of Almoners for January 23rd, 1748,
indicated that it was prepared to appoint someone to assist Mr Hodgson (who is far
advanced in years). The decision was made to ask Mr John Robertson if he would be
prepared to take up such an appointment, and the Committee minutes for February 4, 1748
indicated that Robertson accepted the offerhis salary would be 40 pounds per annum, and
this would be paid out of Mr Hodgsons salary (who would be permitted to continue to live
in the house provided by the school). Mr Robertson would be accorded equal powers in
government with Mr Hodgson.
John Robertson, had been born in 1712 and, after serving as an apprentice in a trade, he
began teaching mathematics. Despite not having attended a university he authored his first
book, a Complete Treatise on Mensuration, in 1739, and followed this by being elected
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1741. In 1748 he became a master within RMS, working with
James Hodgson. During the period 17481755 he held together the RMS program by
supporting an increasingly enfeebled James Hodgson. Minutes of the Committee of
Almoners testify to Robertsons energy. Robertson (1764) stated that he had been entrusted
by the governors of Christs Hospital (in the beginning of the year 1748) with the care of the
Royal Mathematical School (p. vii), and when Hodgson died on June 25th, 1755, Robertson
was immediately appointed RMS master in his own right. But soon after that, Robertson,
who had had a long professional association with William Montaine, of Trinity Housethe
man responsible for examining naval schoolmasters (Dickinson, 2007)announced that he
would leave RMS in order to take up a prestigious Admiralty appointment in the Royal
Naval Academy at Portsmouth.
From the beginning of his time at Christs Hospital, Robertson effectively assumed
control of the RMS program. In March 1749, for example, the Committee of Almoners had
accepted his recommendation that William Davis (who is very dull and near-sighted) be
removed from the RMS into the Writing School. Robertson took over Hodgsons old
responsibility of recommending names of boys for the RMS programon December 14,
1750, for example, minutes of the Committee of Almoners stated that Mr Robertson says
that there are four vacancies but he cannot get boys to fill them. There was other evidence
that all was not going well within the RMS at that time. The minutes of the Committee of
Almoners for February 1st, 1753, for example, reported that five RMS boys who ran away
for six nights were to be publicly whipt by the Beadle in the Great Hall in the presence of
all the children and confined to the dungeon the four next succeeding holy days.
In the early 1750s the most productive era in the history of RMS was drawing to a
close, and events in Hodgsons final years within RMS made it easy to forget that for at least
The Supporting Star: John Robertson 51
the first 30 years of his 46-year tenure, Hodgson had raised standards within the RMS and
had enhanced the reputation of Christs Hospital to an amazingly high level (Hans, 1951a,
1951b). But, amid the doom and gloom of those final Hodgson years, there was one small
indicator that testified to Hodgsons and Robertsons effectiveness. During 1754 and 1755
Benjamin Raffles, a young RMS student, prepared a magnificent 740-page handwritten
navigation cyphering book (Raffles, 1755). Christs Hospital records indicate that Benjamin,
who was baptized on July 29, 1739, was the son of Thomas R. Raffles.
Benjamin Raffles cyphering book is currently held in the Phillips Library in the Exeter
Institute at Salem, Massachusetts (Ellerton & Clements, 2012). Each of its pages is 11
inches by 8 inches, and it features penmanship, calligraphy, and pen/ink illustrations of the
highest quality. There are gilt royal insignias/seals on the front and rear covers. Our analysis
of the mathematics within the pages of this cyphering book revealed that Benjamin had
studied a standard high-level Christs Hospital RMS curriculum covering arithmetic,
Euclidean geometry, plain and spherical trigonometry, fortification, chronology, and various
aspects of navigation (Ellerton & Clements, 2014). On graduation, Benjamin was
apprenticed to Mr George Hooper, of the Martin, bound for Antigua. Later, he would
become Captain Benjamin Raffles, and would be the father of Thomas Stamford Bingley
Raffles (17811826), now known as the father of Singapore (Wurtzburg, 1986).
It would be unfair to present John Robertson merely as an assistant to James Hodgson.
At the same time as he was at Christs Hospital he wrote and caused to have published the
first edition of his classic The Elements of Navigation. Before coming to RMS he had already
had two prestigious books publishedA Complete Treatise on Mensuration (1739) and
A Treatise of Such Mathematical Instruments as are Usually put into a Portable Case (first
edition 1747, fourth edition, 1778). The Elements of Navigation, in its various editions, would
be used as the main RMS textbook, and the main textbook at the Royal Naval Academy, for
many years. The first edition of The Elements of Navigation, a two-volume book, was
published in 1754, and the first volume, which carried the relatively high price tag of 17
shillings and 6 pence, included sections on logarithms, Euclidean geometry, plane trigono-
metry, spherics, geography, plane sailing, oblique sailing, current sailing, globular sailing,
parallel sailing, middle latitude and Mercators sailing, great circle sailing, astronomy, use of
the globes, of days works, of a sea journal, estimating distances, and fortification.
On the title page of the first volume of The Elements of Navigation it was indicated that
the book had been prepared for the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital and the
Gentlemen of the Navy. The book was dedicated to the president and treasurer of Christs
Hospital and to the other worshipful governors of Christs Hospital (Robertson, 1754, p.
iii). In his preface, Robertson stated that he had written the book for the use of the school
(p. v). He dated his 3-page preface December 24, 1753, and it is interesting that he did not
thank, or even mention, James Hodgson once. Nor did he mention Hodgson in his preface to
the second edition of the book (Robertson, 1764). In 1815, a certain William Falconer
reviewed many textbooks on navigation and concluded that Robertsons original text was an
excellent work, and the best adapted for teaching the art of navigation in a scientific manner
that has yet been published (Falconer, 2011, p. 309).
After losing his position as head of the Royal Naval Academy in 1766, as a result of his
falling foul of the political situation within the Academy, Robertson was appointed clerk and
librarian to the Royal Society, a position he held with distinction until his death in December
1776. He was the first to show that stereographic projection is conformal and in 1775 he
produced the first slide rule with a runner attached. Robertson calibrated John Harrisons
famous chronometer H4 before its first sea trial in November 1761, and was carefully
consulted with respect to the surveying of the famous Maryland-Pennsylvania Mason-Dixon
line in North America (Danson, 2007). The Christs Hospital Committee of Almoners
minutes records that in March 1776, shortly before his death, Robertson served as an
examiner for the Writing School.
As a teacher, writer, and researcher Robertson was neat and methodical; a habit which
he probably had acquired, in some measure, from his friend, William Jones (Robertson,
1767)the mathematician who had placed second when Hodgson was appointed RMS
master in 1709. When Jones died, many of his papers were passed on to Robertson
(Robertson, 1771).
In January 1756, RMS was about to begin a new era. Hodgson was dead, and
Robertson was moving on to Portsmouth. Internally, at Christs Hospital, all was not well,
and Robertson had struggled to get the full complement of Kings boys each year. But,
outside the school RMS had acquired a fine reputation as having, perhaps, the best school
mathematics program in the world (Hans, 1951a, 1951b). That said, it could hardly be
claimed that the program offered mathematics for all. Even within Christs Hospital the
program was available to only a small proportion of the boys. It offered a strong focus on
preparing boys to take up apprenticeships as midshipmen, usually in the merchant marine,
but many children did not want to do that. It was not obvious what benefits boys who did not
wish to become sailors might get by studying subjects like spherical trigonometry and
Mercators sailing. Forty years earlier, Isaac Newton and Humfrey Ditton had failed in
their efforts to create a New Mathematics School with a more encompassing, more liberal,
curriculum, and in 1756 the important curricular question, What mathematics should a
school be offering to those of its students who wished to progress to a study of mathematics
beyond arithmetic?, remained unanswered. Even if the navigation thrust at RMS were to be
retained how could curricular emphases become more practical, and less theoretical?
The Most Celebrated Star: William Wales

Minutes of Christs Hospital Almoners Committee for February 28, 1776, record that
William Wales (c.17341798)see Figure 3.9had been appointed master of RMS. Shortly
before that, Wales, a Yorkshireman of humble origins, had returned after serving as navigator
and astronomer on James Cooks monumental second Pacific voyage (17721775). During
that voyage he had not only used the latest version of John Harrisons revolutionary
chronometer (H4) for determining a ships longitude at sea, but had also prepared a log book
(Wales, 1775) in which locations and conditions, and the ways he used and tested
instruments, were meticulously recorded. On his return to London, Wales deposited his log
book, which contained more than 20 maps and charts, with Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer
Royal.
In November 1776 Wales was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His reputation
was not based solely on what he had done during Cooks second voyage for, despite his not
having had a strong formal education, he had written and published numerous scholarly
articles on mathematics, navigation and science. Between 1768 and 1769, on the
recommendations of the Board of Longitude and the Royal Society, he had spent a year at the
Prince of Waless Fort at Hudsons Bay Company post (at Churchill, Manitoba, Canada), in
order to observe the transit of the planet Venus. He was the first scientist to spend winter in
Hudson Bay, and on his return to London he presented, to the Royal Society, a journal of his
The Most Celebrated Star: William Wales 53
experiences in the harsh conditions that he had experienced at the Bay (Wales, 1770; Wales
& Dymond, 1769; Williams, 1979).
Figure 3.9. Image of William Wales on an official 1974 New Hebrides stamp.
Wales was experienced and knowledgeable so far as theoretical and practical aspects of
navigation were concerned, and was also strong mathematically (see, e.g., Wales, 1772).
Trollope (1834) and Pearce (1901) maintained that as RMS master he acquired a reputation
among his students for being a firm but fair disciplinarian. Leigh Hunt, a poet and a Christs
Hospital student of the 1780s and 1790sbut never a student in the Royal Mathematical
Schooldescribed Wales as a good man of plain, simple manners, with a heavy, large
person and benign countenance (quoted in Lucas, 1913, p. 463). Charles Lamb, the poet
who, like Hunt, was a Christs Hospital student but never an RMS student, wrote that
although the RMS boys tended to be bullies to the younger students of the school, it was well
recognized that William Wales was greatly respected by his students (Lucas, 1913).
William Waless daughter married Arthur William Trollope, the headmaster of Christs
Hospital and a distinguished classical scholar whose own school education had been at
Christs Hospital. That union represented a coming-together, after more than a century of
mutual mistrust, of the RMS and the increasingly powerful Grammar School. After this,
Wales did not object when, slowly but surely, the influence of RMS within Christs Hospital
dissipated.
Arthur Trollopes son, William Trollope, wrote a history of Christs Hospital (Trollope,
1834) and, given that William Wales was William Trollopes grandfather, it is hardly
surprising that Wales was celebrated in that history as the greatest of the RMS masters
whereas James Hodgson was hardly mentioned. E. H. Pearce (1901), in his Annals of
Christs Hospital, also celebrated the work of Wales but did not mention Hodgson. More will
be said on that theme in Chapter 7, which is dedicated to developments in RMS when
William Wales was master.
For most of the years during Waless 22 years as RMS master he struggled to fill
vacancies for students in the RMS program (see, e.g., minutes of the Committee of Almoners
for November 20th, 1776, and December 7th, 1779). One revealing entry in the minutes of
the Committee of Almoners was on June 14th, 1785, when the names and mathematical
backgrounds for seven boys desirous of being admitted to RMS were listed as follows:
1. William Drinkwater, aged 13 in October 1785, writes indifferently, and can
perform the four first rules in arithmetic;
2. Joseph Stocks aged 11 in February 1786, writes badly, cannot numerate, add,
subtract, or multiply;
3. Richard Maund, aged 13 in July 1785, writes badly, and can neither numerate,
add nor subtract;
4. Richard Brown, aged 11 in February 1786, writes indifferently, can neither
numerate, add, subtract, nor multiply;
5. William Salmon, aged 13 in May 1785, writes indifferently, and can neither
numerate, add, subtract nor multiply;
6. Samuel Carless, aged 12 in October 1785, writes indifferently and can neither
numerate, add, subtract nor multiply;
7. George Watson, aged 10 in January 1786, writes indifferently, and can neither
numerate, add, subtract, nor multiply.
The minutes recorded that the Committee agreed that the seven boys should fill the said
vacancies. Given that boys were not supposed to be accepted into RMS unless they had
cyphered to the rule of three, this decision was surprising. Given, also, that RMS boys had to
master decimals, logarithms, plain and spherical trigonometry, and the sophisticated
mathematics associated with the various kinds of sailing, Euclidean geometry, etc., and to do
all of this within 18 months, one begins to wonder what instructional magic Mr Wales would
have needed to call upon if he were to get these seven students to the point where they could
convince Trinity House external examiners that they were ready to take up sea-faring
apprenticeships.
The Contribution of RMS to the History of School Mathematics, Seen from an

International Perspective
In the foregoing description of 10 stars in the RMS firmament there was no attempt to
provide summaries of all aspects of the lives of the stars. The focus, in each case, was on
what the reader needed to know in order to be in a position to appreciate the contribution that
each star made to the development of RMS as an educationally effective entity.
The literature has not provided us with critical analyses of how effective RMS
programs were, from an educational perspective, during the 125-year period that began with
the foundational work of Samuel Pepys and Jonas Moore and ended with the death of the
much-celebrated William Wales. The following chapters will attempt to rectify that situation.
They will provide commentary on the six main research questions identified in Chapter 1,
and will enable a succinct summary to be offered of the main arguments which will be put
forward in the final chapter of this book.
The following themes will be elaborated upon in the chapters which follow:
1. Any attempt to change the culture of a well-established school like Christs
Hospital, which before 1673 had, at its pinnacle, a curriculum featuring the
An International Perspective 55
serious study of classics, would not be easy. Why should classics masters who
had worked for years to establish an outstanding grammar school be expected to
cooperate with a new scheme which promised to make navigation and
mathematics the most important subjects for higher study in their school?
2. The idea of creating a Royal Mathematical School which would train young boys
aged between 12- and 16-years to become naval apprentices was remarkable in
the sense that nobody, anywhere else in the world, had moved to implement a
program based on a similar structure and a similar intended curriculum.
3. From the beginning, the idea that 12- to 16-year-old RMS boys could become
sufficiently competent in Latin that they would be able to read, write, and talk
about navigational principles in that language, was nave to the point of being
foolish.
4. The idea that RMS graduates might excel as naval apprentices without having had
an opportunity to get to know what life on ships was actually like was also nave.
5. Early RMS masters struggled to cope with the teaching demands of their position
because they were not given sufficient time to prepare their students in the
advanced mathematical and navigational topics demanded by external examiners
appointed by Trinity House.
6. The tendency of Christs Hospital to rely too heavily on advice from well-
regarded scholarssuch as Jonas Moore and Isaac Newtonon the question of
who should be appointed as RMS master was foolish. Newton, in particular,
appears to have had virtually no understanding of what young boys, even very
capable young boys, were able to learn. Newton also had little idea of the kind of
day-by-day attention to teaching which would be required of a master if that
master was to have any chance of being successful within RMS.
7. Authors of histories of Christs Hospital (e.g., Allan & Morpurgo, 1984;
Committee of Old Blues, 1953; Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834; Wilson, 1821) have
failed to recognize that by the middle of the eighteenth century many persons
outside of the school community thought that Christs Hospital was not only the
strongest mathematical school in Great Britain, but also one of the best in the
world (Cracraft, 1971; Cross, 2007; Hans, 1951a, 1951b).
8. Those writing histories of mathematics education have failed to recognize the
importance of RMS. Thus, for example, in the 29 chapters in Karps and
Schubrings (2014) edited collection, Handbook on the History of Mathematics
Education, there is no mention of Christs Hospital. The failure to recognize the
large contribution that RMS made to the history of mathematics education can be
associated with the lack of serious attention given to the work of James Hodgson
at Christs Hospital. A. G. Howson (1982), for example, in his A History of
Mathematics Education in England, does not mention Hodgson at all.
Certainly, the establishment of RMS represented a voyage into unknown educational

territory, and therefore our use of words like nave and foolish in some of these summary
points might be regarded, by some readers, as unfair. The early expectation that the language
of instruction should be Latin, for example, was consistent with the classics orientation of
higher education in Great Britain in the seventeenth century. That said, the fact that such a
policy might remain in place for over 30 years, despite obvious difficulties being experienced
by RMS boys, should not have gone unnoticed. The policy that the language of learning
should mainly be Latin would not seriously be questioned until 1709, when James Hodgson
bravely objected to it, soon after he became RMS master.
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Chapter 4
Years of Struggle for RMS 16731708
Abstract: The decision in the early 1670s to create a specialist mathematics/navigation

training program within a school whose buildings had been badly damaged by the Great Fire
of London was both creative and brave. It was creative because it recognized that Christs
Hospital could provide a steady source of boys for the kind of advanced training needed by
apprentices in the Royal Navy or in the merchant marine. It was brave because such a
scheme had never previously been tried anywhere in the world. This chapter tells of the
teething troubles that Samuel Pepys, Jonas Moore, and others, experienced in developing the
RMS curriculum and its associated teaching and learning program. It is argued that the
program designed by Pepys and Moore was nave in that the level of mathematics which it
required of students was too high for 12- to 16-year-old boys who had virtually no formal
education beyond elementary reading, writing, and cyphering.
Keywords: Apprenticeship, Christs Hospital, Curriculum development, Cyphering, History

of school mathematics, Jonas Moore, Language factors in mathematics education, Navigation
education, Royal Mathematical School, Royal Society, Samuel Pepys, Trinity House
The RMS Model and Mathematics for the People
In June 1673, Samuel Pepys became Secretary to the Office of the Lord High Admiral
of England, which was, effectively, Secretary to the Admiralty (Kirk, 1935). He
immediately used his influence to support a scheme which, he believed, would be most likely
to improve not only the long-term functioning of the Royal Navy but also Great Britains
share in, and profits from, international trading ventures (Bryant, 1935; Christs Hospital,
1953). The scheme was to take advantage of the need to rebuild Christs Hospital by
introducing a specialist maritime/mathematical component within the reconstructed school.
The operation of the new mathematical school would ostensibly be funded by the King for
at least the first seven years, and would be known as the Royal Foundation. A new
mathematical section would be established and, at any time, it would educate 40 scholars,
each between 12 and 16 years of age. Prior to entering RMS, each student would have
distinguished himself by the high quality of his work in the Writing and Grammar Schools of
Christs Hospital. On being accepted as an RMS student, each boy would receive and wear a
special badge indicating that he was a Kings boy. The school would employ a well-
qualified teacher who would prepare the Kings boys in theoretical aspects of mathematics
and navigation and would introduce them to the use of instruments important in navigational
practice. On graduating from the school, at around 16 years of age, each boy would be
required to serve a seven-year apprenticeship in the Royal Navy or in the merchant marine.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_4
62 4. Years of Struggle for RMS 16731708
The plan was designed to generate superior midshipmen and higher-level Navy
personnel who would have a strong knowledge of navigation theory and practice. The Royal
Foundation would choose from among those who had performed best in the lower classes of
Christs Hospital, and in that sense it would take advantage of the fact that the boys at the
school were a captive group. At face value, the plan seemed to be simple enough, but it was
untried. No other non-private school in the world at that time routinely taught cohorts of 12-
to 16-year-old children mathematical topics like logarithms, algebra, geometry, plain and
spherical trigonometry, and the various kinds of sailing. Furthermore, RMSs teaching would
not be aimed at children from well-to-do families, but at poor children who had been
admitted to Christs Hospital because they were from families experiencing difficult
circumstances. In a sense, what was being proposed was a scheme that would take
mathematics to the people, and in that sense this was a poignant moment in the history of
school mathematics.
But, at Christs Hospital the way the new mathematical school would be incorporated
into the whole schools program needed to be worked out (Bryant, 1935; Jones, 2015).
Historians must consider whether Pepys, and others like Jonas Moore whom he
consulted about RMS, were educationally nave so far as the design of the RMS program was
concerned. For a start, should they really have expected Grammar School masters at Christs
Hospital, who had prided themselves on the high level of achievement in classical studies of
their top students, to be happy to hand over their best students to mathematical study at the
very time when they were most ripe for serious study of Latin, Greek and Hebrew? Christs
Hospital had been serving Londons destitute, as a school, for 120 years (Manzione, 1995)
and during that time much hard work had been devoted to establishing a fine classical
tradition within the upper sections of the school. Was it fair to expect the classics masters to
pass on their best students to a program which had suddenly been taken on by the School,
without existing teachers having been consulted? What would be the place of Latin in the
new program? Would the RMS boys learn their mathematics from texts written in Latin?
Even more seriously, would 12- to 16-year old boys be capable of benefiting from a
curriculum which introduced high-level content in mathematics and navigation? Some of the
boys in the Writing School at Christs Hospital cyphered to the direct rule of three (City of
London, 1840), but that was well short of more advanced topicslike logarithms, plain and
spherical trigonometry, algebra, geometry, fortification, astronomy, and the various types of
sailingwhich would be part of the RMS curriculum. Was there evidence that 12- to 16-
year-old boys, however carefully chosen, could cope with such a jump in content difficulty?
Related to the last curriculum question was an issue associated with teaching quality.
Were there available teachers who could successfully teach the proposed RMS curriculum to
the boys? There was no school in Great Britain, or, for that matter, in any other country, that
could be consulted on that question (Hans, 1951a, 1951b). In the Netherlands, where, in
1600, the Dutch had introduced Duytsche Mathematique within an engineering training
school attached to the University of Leiden (Dijksterhuis, 1970; Krger, 2015a), the students
had always been older than the boys who would be in the RMS program.
Furthermore, if RMS boys did succeed academically in the Christs Hospital program
would their training be sufficient to enable them to be of much use on ships in which a
practical knowledge of seamanship was often more important than any theoretical
knowledge? Would ship captains be prepared to accept RMS graduates as apprentices?
Pepyss Reactions to RMSs Early Difficulties 63
From these considerations, it could be argued that Pepys and others who supported the
scheme were moving into unchartered education territory. One only has to read the language
Pepys used in his 1677 list of defects with respect to the first four years of operation of RMS
(see Appendix A to this book), and his proposed remedies to those defects, to be convinced
that he was confident that his scheme would work; but it is reasonable to suppose that, from
the outset, his own narrow classical background in education restricted his ability to
recognize what was educationally feasible and what was not.
Pepyss Reactions to RMSs Early Difficulties

Rudolf Kirk (1935) located an early 15-page critique of RMS which Samuel Pepys
prepared in October and November 1677, and analyzed most of the criticisms made by Pepys
at that time. The 16 defects that Pepys identified, and the associated remedies he proposed,
were approved by the General Court of Christs Hospitalone version of the final text has
been presented in Appendix A to this book. Our analyses of the circumstances and events
surrounding the claims made by Pepys differ considerably from Kirks.
The first RMS master to be appointed was John Leeke, who was sufficiently
mathematically capable to have been called upon to check the details of the 1660 edition of
Moores Arithmetick and to have edited Euclids Elements of Geometry with George Serle in
1661 (Iliffe, 1997). According to the minutes of the Mathematics Committee of Christs
Hospital for December 9, 1673, Mr Leeke had been chosen by the President of Christs
Hospital on the recommendation of many of the most eminent members of the Royal
Society. Certainly, on paper, Leeke must have appeared to have been a strong applicant for
the positionbut, he probably won the appointment because he was a long-time friend of
Jonas Moore (Willmoth, 1993). Leeke held the position of RMS Master for four years but
was not able to command respect or maintain reasonable discipline among the RMS boys,
even with the help of an usher (Jones, 2015). In 1677 he was more or less forced to resign
(Willmoth, 1993). The Royal Mathematical School had got off to a bad start.
Pepyss Claim that Preparation in the Writing and Grammar Schools was Inadequate
By the end of 1677 Samuel Pepys had become very dissatisfied with the way RMS was
progressing. The extent of his dissatisfaction is evident in the following statement, recorded
in the minutes of a meeting of governors held at Christs Hospital on October 22nd, 1677
(original spelling and grammar have been retained):
Samuel Pepys Esqr acquainted the Comte that he had considered the present state of
the Mathematicall School in this Hospitall and that finding severall defects in the
management of it, he had considered the said defects and applied such remedies as
he hoped would in a short time sett that Schoole in a better condition than now it
is, which defects and remedies he at large set forth which being done at the request
of the Comte he promised to deliver the same to them in writing to be further
considered off.
This statement leaves one in little doubt with respect to the origins of the 16 defects and
associated remedies set out in Appendix A to this book.
A careful reading of the transcript in Appendix A will reveal that Pepys laid the blame
for RMSs teething problems on the school, and especially on the first RMS master, John
Leeke. Pepys made it clear that he believed that the boys academic preparation in the
Writing and Grammar Schools was inadequate, and that Leeke had compounded the problem
by not being capable of teaching the 40 RMS boys successfully. We would argue, however,
that in fact Leekes position was untenable because the schools expectations of him were
unrealisticfor example, the 1677 report (see Appendix A)made it clear that Pepys
expected much of the teaching and learning within RMS to be in the Latin language. The
RMS boys had not learned to write well enough in the Writing School, and had not learned
enough Latin in the Grammar School, to be in a position to transition seamlessly into the
RMS program.
In 1677 Pepys revised his expectations. According to the new plan, Kings boys were
to remain in the Grammar School for 4 years, in order to be better prepared in Latin, and
then would devote only 1 years to their mathematical and navigational studies. Of the 40
boys officially in the mathematical school at any time, 20 would actually be studying in the
Grammar School and 20 in RMS. Table 4.1 shows the program drawn up by Pepys himself
(Kirk, 1935, p. 9).
Table 4.1
Samuel Pepyss Table Showing the Age at which it was Proposed a Future RMS Student
Would Enter Christs Hospital, the Time he Would Stay in a Particular School, and the Age
at Which he Would be Fitted to be Removed from Each School (from Kirk, 1935, p. 9)
.
At a Boys Entrance Into ... Age Stay There Age Going

(Years) Thence
The Reading School. 8, or less 1 9
The Writing School, to prepare him for Latin. 9 9
The Latin School, to understand Tullys Epistles or 9 4 14
Erasmuss Colloquies.
The Writing School, to finish his writing and arithmetic 14 14
to the rule of three.
The Mathematical School, to be raised to a proficiency 14 1 16
fitting him to be put forth as an apprentice.
Modern education perspective would suggest that Pepyss recommendation to reduce

the amount of time the boys would spend studying mathematics and navigation to 1 years,
while allowing 4 years for the study of Latin, was bizarre. The intended RMS mathematics
and navigation curriculum comprised topics that would have been completely new to RMS
boys, and at a much higher level than what they had previously been asked to study.
Furthermore, Pepyss program required the boys to be examined, by expert examiners who
regularly visited the school, and by external experts from Trinity House. It was assumed
that these experts would have a strong knowledge of the mathematics and navigation in the
RMS program, but there could be no guarantee that their interpretations of the RMS
curriculum would be consistent with Leekes. As it turned out, Leeke was very unhappy with
the questions that the Trinity House examiners asked of the RMS boys he sent to them (see
Defect the 2nd in the Institution, in Appendix A to this book).
The 1677 recommendations required that RMS lessons be both read and performed in
Latin (see notes on Defect the 3rd in the Institution, in Appendix A). As a classics scholar
himself, it is not surprising that Pepys believed that the study of Latin would be useful for
future midshipmen and navigators. Pepys went so far as to recommend that once RMS
students had actually begun their studies of mathematics and navigationthat is to say,
during the last 18 months of their time at Christs Hospitalthey should be required to do
nightly exercises in Latin under the supervision of the master of the Grammar School.
Furthermore, he recommended that the students mathematics textbook should be in Latin,
and that they should be taught from it. Towards that end, he stated that each boy ought to be
supplied with a Grammar and Dictionary, and two or three small Latin authors (quoted in
Kirk, 1935, pp. 89).
In The Invention of the Secondary Curriculum, John White (2011) has argued that the
move towards a more practical, less classically-oriented, curriculum in England in the
seventeenth century derived from the teachings of Petrus Ramus, a French academic,
philosopher and Huguenot convert. Ramus called for all branches of knowledge to be
brought together, and emphasized the relevance of theory to practical applications. In our
analysis of minutes of the Christs Hospital Committee of Almoners, and of Pepyss diary
entries in the 1660s, we have not found any evidence that the structure of RMS was directly
influenced by such a philosophy. Rather, our impression is that Pepys, convinced of a need to
improve the quality of thinking within the administration and practices of the Royal Navy,
simply took advantage of the need to rebuild Christs Hospital after the Great Fire.
It should be noted that Table 4.1, which was conceived by Pepys, was meant to apply
only to those children at Christs Hospital who were chosen to become RMS students. Most
seventeenth-century Christs Hospital students began in the Reading School and progressed
into the Writing School, and then left school around the age of 13. The aim was for these
students to learn to read, write, and cypher to the rule of three (City of London, 1840)and
if they succeeded in that then they were likely to be apprenticed as clerks. Being able to read
and write was a well-regarded achievement. However, those students in the Writing School
who excelled academically might be chosen, when they were about nine years of age, to
enter the Grammar (or Latin) School, where the emphasis was, almost exclusively, on
Latin (although, depending on the teachers, there might also be some attention to Greek and
Hebrew). Ironically, since students in the Grammar School did not spend much time on
cyphering, it was often the case that Grammar School students who were chosen to move
into the RMS program had not learned as much arithmetic as might reasonably be expected
of boys entering a program dedicated to mathematics and navigation education.
Educational implications of Pepyss table (see Figure 4.1) should not go unnoticed. By
adopting the plan, Christs Hospital was effectively saying that it believed that the best
curricular preparation for future navigators was to study Latin for 4 years (when they were
aged between 9 and 14 years) and then to study mathematics and the principles of
navigation for a period of 18 months (when they were aged between 14 and 16 years). That
well-educated people could agree to such a plan testified to the power of belief in the virtues
of a classical education. This same attitude would prevail in education circles for the
remainder of the seventeenth century, and indeed for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. In Chapter 8 of this present work, evidence is provided that even in the mid-1860s
William Webster, the head of RMS, still accepted that point of view.
Pepyss Claim that the RMS Master was not Succeeding

In 1677 Pepys maintained that RMS was not succeeding because John Leeke, the first
RMS master, had not performed in a satisfactory way. He wrote that Leeke was struggling to
maintain decent discipline among the boys, and spent too much time giving private tuition to
boys from outside the school in a room which was separate from the main RMS classroom.
When the RMS Committee offered Leeke an extra 20 pounds per annum if he would no
longer take in the outside students, he refused and then resigned. The case against Leeke
seemed strong, and historians have blamed Leeke for the early difficulties faced by RMS
(see, e.g., Christs Hospital, 1953; Iliffe, 1997; Kirk, 1935; Plumley, 1976; Taylor, 1954;
Willmoth, 1993). But the fairness of that interpretation needs to be questioned. Leeke beat
several other strong applicants for the position (see footnote 12 of Iliffe 1997, p. 121). One
needs to consider, then, why Leeke did not succeed, and an obvious reason is that the
conditions in which he had to work were less than satisfactory.
Any person with much experience in teaching secondary school mathematics will
vouch how difficult it is to teach mathematics to boys aged between 12 and 16 years if they
are struggling to understand what they are asked to learn. Initially, Leeke was faced with a
class of RMS boys who were expected to learn topics which were different from, and of
much greater difficulty than, any forms of mathematics that they had previously been asked
to learn. These boys had all come through a Writing School in which arithmetic was studied
according to the cyphering tradition by which students relied heavily on being able to consult
some related textperhaps a textbook, or perhaps a cyphering book, that had been prepared
by someone else (Ellerton & Clements, 2012). On most of the school days during his time at
RMS Leeke would have been challenged by the fact that his RMS students lacked a strong
preparation in elementary mathematics, did not have access to enough textbooks, or to
enough relevant parent cyphering books, and had to be taught in a room that was not
designed to be a classroom (Plumley, 1976).
At 50 pounds per annum, plus the use of a house, Leekes salary was quite low, and he
would have felt justified in taking in outside pupils whose tuition fees would have enabled
him to get a total income which was more consistent with his extensive experience and
known expertise in mathematics. From his perspective, his income was insufficient (Jones,
2015; Pearce, 1901; Plumley, 1976). The terms of his employment permitted him to take in
extra pupils and to teach them in a separate room during class time while an usher
supervised his RMS class. We do not know if the usher knew much about the mathematics
that the boys were trying to learn (Plumley, 1976), but we do know that the school was
unhappy with the lack of progress in mathematics made by the RMS boys.
Trinity House examiners passed the first RMS boys to be examined and were pleased
to see his Majestys Royal Institution receive so hopeful a beginning as the instances we
have met (quoted in Plumley, 1973, p. 582). They praised Leeke for his extraordinary
abilities and industry (Great Britain, 1881, p. 256). But Pepys became Master of Trinity
House in 1676, and he was not happy with the quality of RMS boys being put forward for
examination. Some of the boys who had not been passed by Trinity House examiners had
been permitted to stay on at RMS when they were more than 16 years of age. Those were the
prevailing circumstances when Pepys wrote his manifesto on what he perceived to be
defects of RMS, and on possible strategies for overcoming these defects.
Pepys recognized that the RMS Committee should have made sure that Leeke and the
boys were provided with a well-written and curriculum-relevant textbook which would have
helped to structure the course and prepare the boys for the external oral examination which
they would need to pass before they could be offered apprenticeships. In February 1677 the
RMS Committee admitted that a textbook was needed, and that Mr Leeke did not have the
time to write it (Iliffe, 1997). The Committee asked Jonas Moore if he could write such a
textbook and Moore agreed to do so. But despite two reminders from Pepys, little progress
on that matter had been made when Moore died two years later, in 1679. Part of the problem
would have been that the text was to be written in Latin as well as in English (Iliffe, 1997).
Pepys maintainedpreposterously, in our opinionthat the students learning would
improve if Moores proposed book could be translated into Latin and the students forced to
learn their mathematics and navigation in that language.
Pepys pointed out that RMS boys had been sent for examination to Trinity House
without the approval of Christs Hospitals governors, and indicated that this could easily be
remedied by insisting that no child should be sent to Trinity House without a certificate of
proficiency from the master, signed by the President and three governors (Kirk, 1935,
p. 10). The possibility that the Trinity House examiners might not be as knowledgeable in some
areas of the RMS curriculum as Leeke, and yet they were being given the power to rule that
students whom Leeke deemed to be competent were, in fact, not competent, was considered,
and it was ruled that Trinity House examiners should have complete authority. Furthermore,
the question of what needed to be done before students went up for examination by Trinity
House should have been decided at the outset, before any students were examined.
Fundamentally, any blame should not have laid at the feet of an over-burdened Mr Leeke.
Pepys also complained about the behavior of some RMS boysapparently some of the
boys had been cheeky to a master of the Grammar School who had formerly taught them.
This raised the question of where Mr Leekes responsibilities with respect to RMS boys
started and ended. Was it fair to hold him responsible for what the boys did outside of normal
RMS class hours?
The validity of the conclusion that Leeke was mostly to blame for the unsatisfactory
early years of RMS is, therefore, highly questionable. It would be much fairer to blame the
governors of Christs Hospital, the members of the RMS Committee and, in particular, Pepys
and Moore. The early RMS years were poorly planned, and the master was not provided with
anything like the amount of time and quality of support needed to be well placed to instruct
the boys in the implemented curriculum that Trinity House examiners assumed to be in place.
A case against Jonas Moore. In 1674 Nathaniel Brooke, a London-based printer,
published A Mathematical Compendium ..., a book which dealt with post-rule-of-three topics
like indices, logarithms, astronomy, navigation, fortification, gunnery, gauging, and the
projection of the sphere. The preliminary pages indicated that the book was taken largely
from notes and papers of Jonas Moore, and had been edited by Nicholas Stephensonwho
was a trusted clerk for Moore and editor of almanacs which appeared in Moores name
(Willmoth, 1993). In Chapter 3 of this book we pointed out that between 1674 and 1705 five
editions of A Mathematical Compendium appeared, and in the 1705 edition it was stated that
the author of the early editions had really been Jonas Moore.
Since Moore was so intimately associated with the establishment of RMS it is
surprising that this book was not adopted as the RMS textbook immediately after its initial
publication in 1674. The price of A Mathematical Compendium was a mere 2 shillings and 6
pence, and the book could have been used until Moore had completed a fuller, more
comprehensive, version and, perhaps, a Latin translation of it had been achieved. The
question why, in 1677when Moore agreed to prepare a textbook for RMShe did not
quickly arrange for a suitably extended version of A Mathematical Compendium to be passed
on to RMS for publication by the School has not been discussed by historians. We conjecture
that Moore, or his publisher, hoped that the School would agree to publish a much more
sophisticated textbook for use by RMS studentsone which would be likely to be much
more profitable for the author and the publisher. The venture would have been likely to be
particularly profitable if each RMS graduate would be given a copy to assist him as an
apprentice midshipman or naval teacher.
When Moore died in 1679, Peter Perkins (then RMS master, but who would die in
1680), John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley worked hard at completing the two-volume A
New Systeme of the Mathematicks for RMS students. A lavishly-bound book was published
in 1681, and it is a travesty of justice that when the book, which was priced at 35 shillings
almost 15 times the price of the modestly produced A Mathematical Compendium
appeared, Jonas Moore was named as its major author (Willmoth, 1993).
Robert Scott, publisher of A New Systeme of the Mathematicks, pleaded, in vain, with
Christs Hospital to give a copy of the book to each RMS graduate. Allen (1970) claimed that
entries in a Christs Hospital account book for 1681 indicates that although a class set of
Perkins (1681) The Seamans Tutor was purchased by the School, there is no record of
Moores (1681) A New Systeme having been purchased by the School, at that time. Although
the School may have purchased a few copies of A New Systeme later, there is no evidence
that it was used by RMS boys between 1682 and 1695the period when Edward Paget was
RMS master (see the letter from Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, dated May 29, 1694,
reproduced in Turnbull, 1961, p. 371, and also as part of Appendix B to this book).
One thing is certainthe delay in getting a suitable reference book made it difficult for
early RMS masters to succeed. When the successor to Leeke was being appointed the
qualifications required of the new master included the ability to be a writing master who
would insist that the RMS boys prepared excellent geometricall schmes and draughts
(Iliffe, 1997, p. 123). So, it seems that even in the 1670s the RMS boys were expected to
prepare attractive cyphering books (Ellerton & Clements, 2012). If that was indeed the case,
then the master would have been pleased if the boys had had a well-regarded textbook from
which they could have copied material. The absence of such a text was another area in which
early RMS masters were disadvantaged by inadequate planning and by slow action from
those ultimately responsible for the operation of RMS.
Pepys Broadens his Attack on the Quality of Education at Christs Hospital

Pepys, obviously unhappy with the educational outputs in the early years of the RMS,
continued to be a thorn in the side of Christs Hospital officials (Christs Hospital, 1953). He
had been appointed a governor of the school in 1675, was Secretary to the Admiralty, and
was Master of Trinity House in 1676. He was therefore well placed to have considerable
influence on RMSs development. In the early 1680s he broadened his attack on the work of
the school, alleging that the Grammar School was sending students to RMS who could
neither read nor write to a reasonable level. He reported that it had come to his attention that
too often Grammar School masters, on the plea of illness, were relegating their work to
ushers, and urged that masters accused of neglecting their students should be asked to justify
Pepys Broadens his Attack 69
themselves to higher authorities in the school. Pepys even recommended that a quorum of
the Court should signify every quarter its approval of the work of masters before they should
be paid (quoted in Kirk, 1935, p. 20). One can imagine that the Grammar School, which had
worked hard over many years to establish a strong reputation, would not have been happy
with the accusations being made, and would have been particularly annoyed with the RMS,
because that was regarded as Pepyss brainchild.
Tensions between the Grammar School, on the one hand, and Pepys and RMS, on the
other, were heightened when, following Pepyss suggestion, between 1681 and 1685 Antonio
Verrio was engaged to paint a massive picture in the newly-constructed Great Hall, to honor
King Charles the Second, the founder of the Mathematical School. A large chart is
displayed for the King, and a number of children with scrolls of paper and drawing
instruments are presenting their work to the monarch. Also to be seen were noblemen and
city officialsand one of these seemed to be Samuel Pepys (Kirk, 1935). Initially, it was
King Charles II who was depicted in the painting, but on Charless death in 1685, at the
direction of the Court of Christs Hospital, Charles head was painted over and James IIs
head painted in its place (Flecker, 1939). Figure 4.1 shows a smaller work, with a similar
theme, painted by Verrio around that time.
Figure 4.1. Charles II giving audience at Christs Hospital ( Victoria and Albert Museum,
London). It is thought to have been painted by Verrio immediately before he painted the
large painting with a similar theme.
The extent of Antonio Verrios 87-foot long painting is well illustrated on the right side
of the sketch from the Illustrated London News (October 1st, 1842, p. 1) reproduced in
Figure 4.2. A nineteenth-century Grecian orator (senior Grammar School student) is shown
delivering the annual oration within the Great Hall at Christs Hospital, London.
Figure 4.2. A nineteenth-century Grecian (senior Grammar School student) delivering the
annual oration within the Great Hall at Christs Hospital. Notice the extent of the Verrio
painting on the wall (Illustrated London News, October 1st, 1842, p. 1).
For most of the decade after the creation of RMS, Pepys was very unhappy with the
educational output of the program (see, for example, Appendix A to this book). On March
25, 1682, he wrote to Mr Parrey, the school treasurer: Unable to suffer the business of the
math. school to remain longer in its present condition, without bringing either to an
immediate reformation, or finally washing my hands of it (quoted, with modern spelling,
from Kirk, 1935, p. 17). No doubt, there would have been many masters in the school, and
also school officials, who would have hoped that Pepys might honor his threat and disappear
altogether from the Christs Hospital scene. In fact, during the second half of the 1680s and
during the early 1690s, he did do just that, only to return in the second half of the 1690s
(Flecker, 1939; Jones, 2015; Kirk, 1935). But even in his absence, masters, students, and
officials would have been constantly reminded of his work whenever they entered the Great
HallVerrios painting was so large that it was impossible to miss. Pepys, and the General
Court, had ensured that the RMS was a constant and visible reality in the school.
The RMS Under Peter Perkins, Robert Wood and Edward Paget
There are numerous accounts of the difficulties experienced by RMS masters during the
period 16731708 (see, e.g., Iliffe, 1997; Willmoth, 1993), and in those accounts brief
mention is often made of the politics associated with the appointments of those masters. It
will be useful in this section to summarize discussions and events surrounding RMS masters
who followed John Leeke and were in office during Pepys lifetime. Peter Perkins was
master from 1678 to 1680. He was followed Dr Robert Wood (from 1681 to 1682), Edward
Paget (from 1682 to 1695), and Samuel Newton (from 1695 to 1708) (Trollope, 1834).
The RMS Under Peter Perkins and Robert Wood 71
Peter Perkins
Early in 1678 Peter Perkins (see Figure 4.3) succeeded John Leeke as RMS master.
Before taking up this appointment he had written a textbook on navigation and had been
elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Figure 4.3. Peter Perkins, RMS master, 16781680. This 1682 image is by Jan Drapentier
Perkins appointment was strongly recommended by Jonas Moore, and was also
supported by John Flamsteed, Edmond Halley and Robert Hooke (Christs Hospital, minutes
of the General Court, February 19th, 1678). Although Perkins would work hard as RMS
master, there were complaints about his harsh disciplinary treatment of the boys (Christs
Hospital, minutes of the General Court, July 15th, 1679).
At the time of Perkins appointment he was regarded as an experienced and capable
mathematics teacher, someone who was particularly strong in practical mathematics
(especially surveying). During his brief tenure he sent two RMS boys each month to the
Greenwich Observatory (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, October 3rd,
1679). John Flamsteed complained about the extra work that the supervision of the RMS
boys created for him (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, December 3rd, 1679),
but at least the boys were gaining practical experiences in astronomy and in data collection
and analysis. Perkins also took RMS boys to lectures at Gresham College. Jonas Moore had
agreed to prepare a textbook for the RMS, but when that did not eventuate Perkins prepared
several chapters which were incorporated into A New Systeme of the Mathematickswhich,
when it finally appeared, was unfairly attributed, solely, to the eminently worthy Jonas
Moore, Knight (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, June 22nd, 1680, and
February 25th, 1681; Willmoth, 1993).
Robert Wood
Dr Robert Wood (16221685), who followed Perkins as RMS master, had paused
before agreeing to accept a long list of requirements set out, formally, in the job description
(Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, March 16th, 1682). Wood held a Master of
Arts from the University of Oxford, had translated Oughtreds Clavis Mathematicae in 1652,
and was strong in mathematics. He was a good classical scholar, having matriculated at
Merton College, at the University of Oxford. He was recommended for the RMS position by
John Wallis, William Oughtred and Christopher Wren.
During the short time he was at Christs Hospital, from 1680 to 1681, he was elected a
member of the Royal Society. However, he showed all the signs of being too old, and seemed
unable to cope with the teaching demands of his position. Trinity House examiners reported
that some of the boys whom he had recommended as ready to be apprenticed were grossly
deficient in their knowledge and skills with respect to important curricular themes. Minutes
of the Christs Hospital Committee of Almoners indicate that he was frequently absent from
class, and tended to use an assistant who was often drunk (Iliffe, 1997). Late in 1681 Wood
claimed that the RMS boys needed a decent textbook, and resigned after having been RMS
master for less than two years.
Edward Paget
Wood was succeeded as RMS master by Edward Pagetsometimes spelt Pagitta
26-year-old Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, who had not only been recommended for
the position by Isaac Newton, but also by John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley. There were
several strong applicants for the position but, despite some opposition to Pagets appointment
from Samuel Pepys, Paget was selected because he was an outstanding mathematician with
excellent knowledge of Latin and Greek (Taylor, 1954). Although he had virtually no
experience in navigation, this did not seem to worry the selection committee whose members
thought that he could acquire such knowledge merely by being put on a ship for about 20
days (Iliffe, 1997). One of the members of the selection committee stated that because of
Isaac Newtons pre-eminence, the committee was virtually compelled to appoint Paget.
There have been mixed evaluations of Pagets effectiveness as RMS master. According
to Flamsteed, during Pagets time at Christs Hospital he became much addicted to
drunkenness and was forgetful of his duties (quoted in Iliffe, 1997, p. 129). On two
occasions he was given leave from his position for several months, in order that he could
spend time in Flandershe claimed that he needed to do that for health reasons (Jones,
2015). In the early 1690s he attempted to redefine the RMS curriculum, and although his
efforts in that regard won support from Isaac Newton (Jones, 2015; Turnbull, 1961), he was
not well-liked by his students or by other Christs Hospital teachers.
On the positive side, however, Paget was responsible for getting the monarch to inspect
RMS boys navigation cyphering books each year (Christs Hospital, minutes of the Schools
Committee, January 18th, 1683), and that helped the RMS to improve its reputation both
inside and outside of the school (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, July 3,
1691). He also introduced the serious study of algebra within the RMS program (Christs
Hospital, minutes of the General Court, July 3, 1691).
Paget resigned his position in 1695, giving health reasons for his decision.
Mathematics War: Samuel Newton, RMS Master, Versus Trinity House Examiners
In the middle of the 1690s Christs Hospital as an institution was seriously in debt and
the costs of running RMS seemed to have contributed much to that debt (Jones, 2015). That
said, some Christs Hospital authorities believed the appointment of a strong RMS master
could turn around the fortunes of the RMS program. Much to Flamsteeds annoyance,
Samuel Newton Versus Trinity House Examiners 73
however, the next appointment was Samuel Newton, a teacher of mathematics who had never
been to sea. Newton was awarded the RMS position despite the fact that he was not well
appreciated by either John Flamsteed or Samuel Pepys. Samuel Newton was the only early
RMS master never to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Before taking up his
appointment at Christs Hospital he had conducted a private mathematical school at
Wapping, and upon leaving Christs Hospital he opened a private school near Billington
(Taylor, 1954). His salary as RMS master was 100 per annum and a school house. He was
not permitted to employ an usher or assistant unless he was ill, and he was not allowed to
take private pupils or boarders (Jones, 2015).
Both Flamsteed and Pepys were concerned that Samuel Newton did not have strong
theoretical knowledge of mathematics and navigation, and therefore was likely to teach RMS
boys to tackle problems in pedestrian ways (Iliffe, 1997). Flamsteed believed that Samuel
Newton won the appointment in 1695 because the selection committee had been turned off
university men because of the perceived failure of Edward Paget. John Caswell, of Oxford
University, who had been given fine references by Christopher Wren, John Wallis and David
Gregory, withdrew his application after learning about the conditions of work (Wigelsworth,
2010). In 1709, Caswell (16561712) would succeed David Gregory as Savilian Professor of
Astronomy at Oxford University (Turnbull, 1961). Edmond Halley had expressed interest in
the RMS position but did not apply for it even though Pepys encouraged him to do so.
Flamsteed had opposed the idea of Halley being appointed, on religious grounds (Iliffe,
1997).
Samuel Newton was not related to Isaac Newton and the wisdom of his appointment to
RMS was questioned by the latter (De La Bedoyere, 2006; Jones, 2015). Isaac Newton
observed that although Samuel Newton was well qualified in the sense that he had had
experience in teaching navigation and had authored a textbook on geography and navigation
which had been published in 1695 (Wigelsworth, 2010), he could not guarantee that his
knowledge of higher mathematics was sufficiently strong.
As it turned out, Samuel Newton was RMS master for almost 14 years (Iliffe, 1997;
Kirk, 1935). Like Isaac Newton, he thought that the RMS course was too detailed and
difficult for 14- to 16-year boys to complete in a mere 18 months (Iliffe, 1997; Wigelsworth,
2010). Isaac Newton, who often spoke out in favor of RMS boys learning mathematics and
navigation in Latin, nevertheless complained that although he viewed the study of classics
favorably, he found it hard to justify any RMS program in which boys spent over four years
on classics and less than two years on mathematics and navigation (Iliffe, 1997; Turnbull,
1961).
During Samuel Newtons tenure at Christs Hospital there were numerous incidents
which suggested that his day-by-day school teaching experiences were not happy ones for
him. Thus, for example, Samuel Pepys accused him of being cruel to the boys, and the
Committee of Almoners ordered him not to use any such thing as a fferillo in his school for
the future but rather as there is occasion to lash them (quoted in Pearce, 1901, p. 121, and
Roberts, 1924, p. 22). Early in 1709 Samuel Newton was dismissed for insufficiency
(Iliffe, 1997, p. 143).
From the outset, Samuel Newton believed that Trinity House unduly interfered with his
efforts to improve the RMS program (see the letter from Samuel Newton to Samuel Pepys,
August 8, 1695, reproduced in De La Bedoyere, 2006, p. 222), and this manifested itself in
an unhealthy tension between him and Trinity Houseas some of the following excerpts
from the minutes of the Committee of Almoners for meetings held throughout 1708 reveal.
Trinity House officials countered Newtons allegations by making it clear that they believed
that the level of learning they found in boys sent to them by Newton was, too often,
inadequate.
Excerpts from Meetings of the Committee of Almoners Held Between March and
December, 1708, Concerning Mr Samuel Newtons Clash with Trinity House
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on March 26th, 1708. At the
Committee of Almoners meeting, on March 26, 1708, John Colson, Examiner of the Royal
Mathematical School certified that he had examined the Mathematics boys of the Royal
Foundation and found them in general well influenced and competently knowing.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on April 6th, 1708. The
minutes recorded that Mr Newton, School Master of the Royal Mathematical Foundation,
presented a certificate that five of his boys, namely Barnaby Barrow, Giles Erkins, Joseph
Amoy, William Clarke, and John Austin, were so competently knowing in all those heads of
learning which he is obliged to teach them, that they are qualified to be sent forth to the sea.
This was a standard way of informing the Committee that he believed that the RMS boys
were ready to be sent to Trinity House, where their knowledge and skills would be assessed
and, if found satisfactory, they would then be eligible to be apprenticed at sea. The
Committee thereupon signed the usual letter to be sent to the Master and Wardens of Trinity
House and ordered that when the President hath signed it, that the same should be sent
together with the certificates in order to have the boys examined.
On the same day the Committee ordered that a Mr Guttor, the Writing master, together
with Mr Newton, the Mathematical master, shall have notice to attend the next Committee to
answer complaints that had been made of the RMS boys handwriting.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on May 19th, 1708. It was
ordered that Giles Ekins, one of the five Mathematical boys that are next to be placed out
shall be bound to Captain Hodder, Commander of Her Majestys ship the Resolution, after
his certificate is returned from Trinity House upon the five boys examination.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on May 25th, 1708. There
were only five Governors present at this meeting and the first item on the agenda was a piece
of correspondence from the Master and Wardens of Trinity House, dated May 19th, 1708,
which stated that they had examined five boys of the Royal Mathematical Foundation,
namely Barnaby Barrow, Giles Ekins, Joseph Amy, William Clarke, and John Austin, and
that they had found them to be deficient in several particulars; however, if they are made
more perfect therein during their stay, they will be fit to be placed to sea.
Although this statement was not very positive, it was not altogether negative. However,
the five Committee members present ordered that Mr Newton the Mathematical master
should appear at the next Committee to answer to the complaints made of the five boys being
found so deficient. Then, somewhat paradoxically, the five present actually agreed that the
five boys should immediately be bound apprentices to officers of her Majestys ships.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on June 9th, 1708. One of the
early items on the agenda for this meeting was a note from Mr Humfrey Ditton reporting
good progress in his New Mathematical School. The Committee of Almoners was pleased to
note that Mr Ditton had prepared an algebra book, and agreed that the book should be
printed, in both the English and Latin languages, that expenses would be met by Christs
Hospital, and that it should be used by NMS students.
Then the Almoners considered the RMS program. It began by noting that it was not
pleased to hear that an RMS boy, Will Watson, went away from the House about two
months since and has not yet returned, and has been an offender in the like case heretofore.
It ordered that the boy shall be expelled and never entertained or received into the House
any more. The Committee then resumed its consideration of the Trinity House report (from
the Committee meeting of May 25th) regarding the five RMS boys whose work had been
found to be deficient. Mr Samuel Newton was present at the meeting, and read the actual
report given by Trinity House. Newton was not happy with what he read. The minutes stated:
After a long discourse had with the Committee, thereupon he all the while
endeavouring to excuse himself by saying that several of those particulars are
taught divers ways. The Committee at last came to this determination, that for the
future, when any of those boys goes down to Trinity House to be examined, Mr
Newton shall always attend there, at the same time, that he may be privy to the
proceedings of the examiner, and by that means prevent the boys being imposed on.
Although Samuel Newton would have felt encouraged by this decision, it nevertheless
basically pitted him against the Trinity House examiners.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on June 18th, 1708. There
were 15 governors present at this meeting, including a Captain John Merry, who was a
Trinity House Warden well known his for naval exploits in war situations. At this meeting
the reaction of Trinity House to Samuel Newtons criticisms was sharp. The minutes stated:
Whereas five boys of the Royal Mathematical Foundation that were last examined
at Trinity House, and are lately placed forth as apprentices, were found very
defective in several of the particulars which Mr Newton their master is obliged to
teach them, as appears by the letter from the Master and Wardens of Trinity House
of the nineteenth of May last past, the Committee now sent for Mr Newton and
caused his articles and their affections expressed in the letter to be read to him.
And, Dr Harris and Captain Merry took the pain to discourse with him for a
considerable time upon the several heads which his boys were found deficient in.
And, upon that whole matter the Committee were of opinion that the boys of that
school have been neglected and that Mr Newton is blamable, and that the
Governors are obliged to the brothers of Trinity House for the great pains and care
they have taken in this affair. And the Committee advised Mr Newton to be more
diligent for the future so his own reputation, and the reputation of the House may
not suffer, or otherwise some other measures must be taken.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on September 16th, 1708.
Into this politically-charged situation came Mr John Colson, with his independent report on
the Royal Foundation:
I have examined the Mathematical boys of the Royal Foundation, those of the upper
class, in arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry plain and spherical, in the use of globes,
those of the lower classes as time would permit, and find them competently knowing.
At the same meeting it was ordered that seven RMS boys shall go to the Writing School
every afternoon in the week ... for the improvement of their writing, and it was noted that
the deficient handwriting was much to the dishonour of the House, as well as detriment to
the boys to send them out so imperfect in their writing.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting held on December 8th, 1708. The
meeting began with the reading of a letter, dated November 30th, from Trinity House
returning as unqualified the five boys that Mr Newton had sent for examination:
This Committee proceeded upon the consideration of the letter from Trinity House
... touching the examination of five of the boys of the Royal Mathematical
Foundation ... who are all returned unqualified and two of them very ignorant in
the ten articles of mathematical learning which Mr Newton certified they were all
competently knowing, and the other three perfect in five of the 10 articles, so that
they might be returned to Trinity House (after they have been better instructed) to
be so examined before they can be bound forth apprentices to sea service. Captain
Merry was pleased to acquaint the Committee with the proceedings of the
examiner at Trinity House from day to day and how each boy performed, he being
present all the time the boys were under examination which was between two and
three hours in nine several days, and after all the pains that was taken in their
examination found those boys more ignorant in their business than any others that
have of late years come before the Brothers of Trinity House, which occasioned
them to send a letter in the terms above specified.
The Committee, after a long debate about this matter, was satisfied that it was either through
the neglect or incapacity of the master that the boys were no better instructed, and then called
in Mr Samuel Newton, the mathematical master, to hear what he could say in his own
defense. He began to justify himself, and then proposed to have the five boys called in to
hear what they can say to their examination. The Committee would not permit the boys to
come in, but gave Mr Newton permission to go on.
Instead of continuing his defence, Mr Newton then delivered the following written
statement:
To the Worshipful the Committee of Governors in Christs Hospital
8th December, 1708
Gentlemen
I have had the honour of being master of the Royal Foundation for almost 14 years
during which time I am not conscious of any neglect of my duty, even for one day.
I now begin to find the truth of what Solomon once declared, that a morsel of
bread in peace [is better] than a stall of ox with strife and contention, and humbly
beg leave to assure your worships that as it was great pleasure and satisfaction to
me, when I was first chosen into this office, that I leave the same with as great a
satisfaction; and humbly hereby resign the said office to be disposed of as your
worships shall (according to your wonton prudence) think most proper for the
Royal Foundation.
And your worships may rest assured, that I shall never be wanting in
promoting the welfare of the Hospital in general, and of the Royal Foundation in
particular, as far as my abilities can extend; and, lastly, I beg leave to return my
most humble thanks to all those worthy Governors who have honoured me with
their friendship and shall ever remain with my prayers to Heaven for the increase
of charity to the Hospital and happiness both here and hereafter.
I am
Your most humble and most obedient servant
Samuel Newton
In response to this statement the minutes of the Committee of Almoners for December 8th,
1708, simply recorded that the Committee received the said resignation and unanimously
agreed to present the same to the next Court for their direction and order therein.
The above excerpts were reproduced because they reveal the untenable situation that
Samuel Newton faced. He was a very experienced teacher of mathematics and navigation,
who had worked hard as RMS master for almost 14 years. His students had almost always
been accepted by Trinity House examiners for 13 years. Now, possibly because he had dared
to question their judgment (see the above excerpt for June 9th, 1708), they seemed to have a
vendetta against him. On two occasions during the time the dispute was ongoing, his work
with the RMS students had been independently assessed as satisfactory by an outside
expert (see excerpts, above, for March 26th and September 16th). The process seemed to
be unfair. Captain Merry, of Trinity House, was able to attend key meetings when the dispute
was at its most intense. When Samuel Newton told the Committee that he had taught his
students to solve certain problems differently from how the examiner wanted them solved,
they did seem to accept that he was entitled to do that.
Furthermore, several of the Mathemats prepared under Samuel Newtons tutelage
would make important contributions to the wider world. Thus, for example, Edward
Moseley, an RMS student during 1696 and 1697, would be the first colonial treasurer of
North Carolina, and, as Surveyor-General of North Carolina, someone who, in 1728, would
survey the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina (Brooks, 2010; Jones, 2015).
Two of Samuel Newtons RMS graduates, Stephen Gwyn and Richard Grice, were chosen by
Peter the Great, of Russia, to help establish the Moscow School of Mathematics and
Navigation (Cross, 2007; Hughes, 2002; Ivashova, 2011; Jones 2015).
Samuel Newton found himself a major combatant in an early mathematics war. He was
an experienced teacher of mathematics but his efforts as RMS master displeased the
gentlemen of the Navy at Trinity House. Samuel Newton believed that too much was being
expected of his 14- to 16-year-old students in the 18-month period they were permitted to
spend actually studying mathematics or navigation in the Royal Mathematical School. On
that issue, he was almost certainly correct. The intended curriculum had been designed by
Trinity House and by Isaac Newton, but did not seem to be consistent with what typical 14-
to 16-year-old school boys were capable of learning. In Pepyss wisdom he had appointed
Trinity House to be the ultimate judge of whether RMS boys had learned what they were
supposed to have learned, and this skirmish between the hapless Samuel Newton and the
powerful gentlemen of the Navy was destined to finish as it did. Samuel Newton was no
longer RMS master, and now a new master was needed.
The minutes of the Committee of Almoners meeting for January 14th, 1709 ordered
that Mr Samuel Newton, late master of the School, shall remove from and clear the dwelling
house in 14 days at farthest; and that he shall, before he is paid the last quarters salary, make
good the books and instruments that are found to be wanting in the library of the school, a
catalogue was left with Mr Newton some days since. Thus, it appears to have been the case
that the RMS masters duties included taking responsibility for books and equipment placed
in the Schools libraryand that the value of any books or equipment stolen by students was
taken from the RMS masters salary.
In his Annals of Christs Hospital the Reverend Ernest H. Pearce (1901), a former
classics scholar and then assistant master at Christs Hospital, gave many of the details of the
Samuel Newton story, as it was told above. But Pearce failed to mention the independent
affirmations of Samuel Newtons work as master of RMS recorded in the minutes of the
Committee of Almoners for March 26th and September 16th, 1708. Pearces chapter on the
Mathematical School followed the same line as Trollopes (1834) earlier description of
RMSspecifically, he alleged that the early RMS masters were poor teachers, and therefore
the RMS boys behavior was poor. According to Trollope, and Pearce, the situation was not
really rectified until the 1770s, when William Wales was appointed RMS master. More will
be said later in this book about that point of view (see Chapter 7)which, we will maintain,
seriously distorts the history of RMS. Here it suffices to note that Pearce did not mention
James Hodgson once, and that was also true of the account given by the school (Committee
of Old Blues, 1953) in its publication celebrating 400 years of existence. In the next two
chapters we will argue that Hodgsonwho succeeded Samuel Newton as RMS masterwas
the greatest of the RMS masters.
Reinterpreting Educational Politics Associated with the Early Years of RMS
There have been many commentaries written on the failures of the early RMS masters
to create a successful training school for prospective navigators (see, e.g., Iliffe, 1997; Jones,
2015; Kirk, 1935; Pearce, 1901; Pepys, 1677; Plumley, 1973, 1976; Taylor, 1954; Trollope,
1834; Willmoth, 1993). In all of those commentaries, the emphasis has been on the apparent
misgivings or inabilities of the masters and, by implication, the failure of those selecting the
masters to make the right choices. Relatively little attention has been given to whether the
RMS program itself was well conceived, and especially to whether the curricula which were
developed and recommended by Trinity House around 1675 (see Chapter 5 of this book), by
Jonas Moore and Pepys, in the 1670s, and by Edward Paget and Isaac Newton in the 1680s
and 1690s, were appropriate and suitable for 14- to 16-year-old boys. We shall now pay
attention to such matters.
Was the Initial RMS Program Well Designed?

Despite the strong influence of Jonas Moore and Samuel Pepys on the development of
the first RMS program, the fundamental idea of asking 14- to 16-year old boys who had not
studied any mathematics for several yearsin fact, for as long as four yearsto become, all
of a sudden, heavily involved in learning mathematical and navigation topics such as
logarithms, plane and spherical trigonometry, geometry, mensuration, and the various kinds
of sailing, was nave. Any expectation that 14-year-olds could learn such materials quickly
was unlikely to be realized unless an outstanding teacher could be obtainedand, even for a
brilliant teacher the task would have been something that would have been very difficult to
achieve.
Reinterpreting Early RMS Educational Politics 79
It is not surprising, then, that the RMS boys often failed to learn the mathematical and
navigational concepts, principles and skills that they were supposed to learn in the one-and-a-
half years allocated to them for that task. More will be said on curricular issues in the next
chapter, but here it suffices to note that we believe that a serious program design error was at
the root of the problems experienced by the early masters, who were all strong
mathematically but lacked the experience of teaching an overly difficult curriculum to boys
who were young and lacking in relevant mathematical and navigational training.
Although it is easy to follow the logic that the nations long-term navigational expertise
might be improved significantly by creating the RMS program at Christs Hospital, the
validity of that logic needed to subjected to more severe questioning than it has been. Samuel
Pepys himself knew hardly any formal mathematics, and had not had experience in teaching
mathematics. He had faith, though, that if he introduced a form of quality control, by
requiring students to pass oral examinations, led by Trinity House examiners, before they
could become apprentices, this would guarantee the readiness of RMS graduates to be useful
within the merchant marine and the Navy. But, that was a matter of faith, something which
from the beginning had not been demonstrated to be true by experience.
Jonas Moore, another major contributor when the original RMS intended curriculum
was devised, had less excuse than Pepys for the inappropriate curriculum which was put
forward in the 1670s. Moore had authored a school arithmetic textbook, and had had
experience in teaching arithmetic. However, one might question whether Moores experience
as a teacher of mathematics would have provided him with much insight into what was
needed at Christs Hospital. In the late 1640s he had individually tutored the Duke of York,
who would become King James II (Stephenson, 1705)but that kind of teaching experience
hardly provided a sold preparation for what would be needed at Christs Hospital.
The Latin issue. The expectation that students should learn mathematics and navigation
in Latin seriously worsened the curriculum problem. In the Netherlands, in the early years of
the seventeenth century, Simon Stevin had developed a mathematically-based program for
17- or 18-year olds who were preparing for military service. But, in those programs the
language of instruction was Dutch, and the textbooks used were written in Dutch, not Latin
(Krger, 2015b; Waters, 1958). Both Pepys and Isaac Newton believed, however, that the
RMS boys should learn mathematics in Latin, in order that they would be able to read the
best books on the subject and be able to communicate freely with scholars from other
countries (see Appendices A and B to this book). That argument came from experts who
did not appreciate that it would have been difficult for 14-year-old boys to learn to apply the
difficult curriculum content in only 18 months even if the language of learning had been their
mother tongue. The experts did not recognize that the extra burden of having to learn difficult
mathematical and navigational content in Latin would have made it impossible for most boys
to learn with understanding. Furthermore, even the Trinity House examiners did not support
the Latin requirement (Adams & Woodward, 2013).
The pedagogy issue. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the most common
form of mathematics studied in schools was abbaco arithmetic (Ellerton & Clements, 2012),
and in Christs Hospital all students moving into RMS were supposed to have cyphered to
the rule of three (which was regarded as a key point in the abbaco curriculum). This
cyphering was done in the Writing School, in which students would have prepared personal
handwritten cyphering books in which entries were made after the work had been checked in
recitation sessions (City of London, 1840; Ellerton & Clements, 2012, 2014). When
preparing entries, in cyphering books, students were expected to consult existing cyphering
books or, if any were available, textbooks. Students moving into RMS would have known of
no other way of studying mathematics. But it is likely that for the first 35 years of the RMSs
existence there were not enough existing navigation cyphering books or textbooks in which
the recommended RMS curriculum was set out, clearly and succinctly. It is unlikely that any
of the early masters would have ever given whole-class instruction, for that was uncommon
at that time. Thus, the teachers had a dilemmawhat should they do to facilitate worthwhile
learning? This was a particularly serious problem for John Leeke, Robert Wood, Edward
Paget, and Samuel Newton, who tended to escape from their RMS classroom obligations by
leaving relatively unqualified ushers to deal with the difficult circumstances. If a master was
ill, and not present at all, students often would not have been able to solve difficult
mathematical problems, and would not have had anyone to whom they could turn for help.
Obviously, such a situation was not conducive to maintaining satisfactory discipline
and most of the early masters struggled to keep students on task. Boys aged 14, 15 or 16
would not have found it easy to be confined to a room, day after day, especially since they
were sometimes expected to cope with difficult curricular material without being able to get
appropriate assistance. Jonas Moore promised he would prepare a curriculum-relevant
textbook, but that was a long time coming, and when, finally, it did come its price tag of 35
shillings meant that the school refused to buy class sets. If the boys misbehaved, then they
were likely to be thrashed by the master or by an usher. Little wonder, then, that the minutes
of the Committee of Almoners often recorded that RMS boys had run away from school.
The assessment issue. As if the intended and implemented curricular issues were not
serious enough, even those boys who tried their hardest to succeed were sometimes told by
external assessors from Trinity House that they were not ready to go to sea as apprentices.
Sometimes the examinations by the Trinity House assessors required them to speak in Latin.
During the early years of RMSs existence, students could be failed by examiners who not
only wanted the students to understand all of the separate components of the curriculum, but
also to solve problems using methods which the examiners preferred (and not the methods
preferred by the RMS master). Thus, both students and masters worked in an untenable
environmentthe masters feared that they would be made to look incompetent, and the boys
feared they would never be able to secure an apprenticeship.
The program development and supervision issue. Certainly, Samuel Pepys was
always willing to blame others for the early difficulties experienced by RMS. However, he
showed no signs of ever seriously considering whether he himself, together with Jonas
Moore, should have shouldered most the blame because the design of the early RMS
program was unsatisfactory. Possibly because he never knew much mathematics himself,
Pepys never questioned the value of curriculum advice offered to him by people like Jonas
Moore, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, John Flamsteed, Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton,
and by the gentlemen of the Navy at Trinity House. The validity of the judgments of the
examiners from Trinity House was sometimes questioned by the masters, but our
examination of minutes of the General Court, the Committee of Almoners, and the
Mathematics Committee, revealed that such complaints were never upheld.
The quality of the educational work done by Isaac Newton for the RMS program
particularly needs to be scrutinized. Newton had such a reputation that in most cases
although not in all caseshis opinions and judgments were accepted and applied to the
program. But many of the early masters who struggled the most (especially Edward Paget)
Reinterpreting Early RMS Educational Politics 81
had been appointed because they had been recommended by Isaac Newton (De La Bedoyere,
2006). Although in 1694 Isaac Newton commendably gave a large amount of his time, freely,
to trying to improve the RMS curriculum, his advice at that time seemed to be given more to
help out Edward Paget, who he thoughtmistakenly, as it turned outhad devised the new
curriculum, than to a genuine thinking-through of the issues which were involved. Newton
always clung to the idea that students should learn substantial high-level mathematics, and
that they should learn it in Latin. He always thought that the mathematics components of the
RMS curriculum were more important than the practical navigational aspects of the
curriculum. One might say of Newton that he thought he knew what was best for school
education but, in fact, he did notand that his high reputation as a scholar meant that his
advice tended to be accepted even when it was unwise. This affected the design and working
of the RMS program in a seriously negative way.
School culture. Another issue which has barely been recognized by historians who
have commented on difficulties experienced by RMS students and masters during the early
years of the RMS program was that the program received little support from those who
worked on a daily basis at Christs Hospital. Over a period of 120 years those leading the
Reading and Writing Schools had worked extremely hard to develop successful programs by
which orphans and street urchins had been taken into the school, taught to read, write, and
cypher. And then placed in forms of employment which used the knowledge and skills that
they had developed. A small proportion of the Writing School students had been permitted to
enter the Grammar School where, if they showed academic promise, they would be taught
Latin, Greek and sometimes Hebrew. Those students were then gainfully employed in
professional situations, especially as clerks or as clergymen (Manzione, 1995).
After the dreadful experiences of the Bubonic Plague and the Great Fire of London, the
Christs Hospital insiders found their school virtually taken over by a program which, from
the Grammar School masters perspectives, would be likely to steal their best students. A
statement on the orders and rules to be observed in the Grammar School in the minutes of
the meeting of the General Court of Christ;s Hospital for January 27, 1679 began with the
sentence: The children of this school are designed primarily for the Mathematical Schoole
and also for the universities. On reading this an outsider might have been excused for
wondering whether the orderMathematical Schoole before universitieswas intended
to convey priority, and there can be no doubt that such a statement represented a major shift
in thinking about the purpose of the school. There was no mention in the minutes of poor
childrenthe school was now to have an elitist orientation, and mathematics was to be very
important. That that was indeed the case was made clear later in the minutes of the same
meeting of the General CourtThe Grammar School of this Hospital is principally intended
for the bringing up of youth to the practice on navigation and universities and this Committee
having fully settled the children to the mathematicks but is wanting time only to consider
how the children could be sent into the universities. Initially masters from the Writing,
Grammar, and Mathematical Schools did confer on timetable issues, but there does not
appear to have been any serious discussion on the criteria by which students should be
transferred from the Writing and Grammar Schools to RMS (see, for example, Christs
Hospital, Mathematics Committee minutes, December 9th, 1673).
From the mid-1680s masters and students were reminded on a daily basis of the
mathematical takeover of the school whenever they entered the Great Hall and were visually
confronted by the massive Verrio painting depicting the creation of the RMS. Part of the
story told in this book is that the Grammar School would fight back and would ultimately
regain its position as Christs Hospital most prestigious program. This fightback would
proceed at a slow but steady pace, and by about 1820 it was complete. Certainly the Writing
School was still charged with teaching children to write and cypher to the rule of three, and
certainly most of students who did that were likely, on graduation, to obtain positions as
clerks (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, February 14, 1679); but, after 1673,
and for much of the eighteenth century, it seems that the ultimate aim was to identify the
most capable boys, and to place them in the Royal Mathematical School or, perhaps, the
University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford.
This culture-clash became a serious issue, indeed almost an internal school war, yet it
was not foreseen by Pepys or by others who helped design the RMS program. If the whole
school community, including the masters, had been involved from the outset in designing a
program that took advantage of the impressive history of the school (Manzione, 1995), and
incorporated healthy cooperation between the schools, then a more coherent RMS program,
consistent with the schools stage of development, might have been the result. But that did
not happen, and we argue, in this book, that bad feelings between those who led the RMS
and the Grammar School adversely affected the quality of the schools overall educational
program for at least two centuries.
The Influence of Christs Hospital on the Development of Mathematics Education in

England and in Other Nations 16731700
Nicholas Hanss Thesis on the International Influence of RMS

In 1951 Nicholas Hans (18881969) made some strong claims about effects of the
emergence of RMS at Christs Hospital on the history of mathematics education, not only at
Christs Hospital or within the United Kingdom, but also within the broader international
scene. Hans (1951a) described the RMS as being the first modern school established
anywhere in the world, and argued that other European nations modelled their systems of
technical education on the RMS program.
Hans was born in Russia early in the twentieth century. He studied, and later lectured,
in the Faculty of Philology at the University of Odessa. During the turbulent post-Revolution
years he decided to leave Russia, and in 1919 he began studies within the Department of
Education at Kings College, London. In 1946 he was appointed as Lecturer at King's
College, and he became Reader in Comparative Education there in 1948. He retired in 1953,
but continued to write on a wide range of topics, especially comparative education,
educational policy in Russia, and the history of education in the eighteenth century. His
comments on the effects of RMS on international mathematics education will be looked at,
briefly, here, and his analyses will be considered further in the final chapter of this book.
Hanss (1951b) book, New Trends in Education in the 18th Century, is especially
relevant to this present work because Hans wrote as a comparative education specialist, as
someone who was especially concerned with offering international perspectives on the
history of eighteenth-century education. However, because he was not someone who
researched solely, or even mainly, in the realm of mathematics education, he was prone to
making factual errors when writing about the history of school mathematics. Thus, for
example, his claim that every year the 10 best boys [at RMS] were apprenticed to the Royal
Navy, and the rest to the merchant ships (p. 214) was not correctin fact, relatively few
Influence of RMS on Other Nations 16731700 83
RMS boys took up apprenticeships in the Royal Navy (Willmoth, 1993). Other aspects of
Hanss writings have also been criticized by historians (Simon, 1979).
That said, Hans always wrote from an international perspective, and attempted to
describe the big picture. He was aware that his writings on the influence of RMS were
breaking new ground so far as the history of education was concerned. That was implicit in
his statement that neither Trollopes (1834) A History of the Royal Foundation of Christs
Hospital, nor Pearces (1901) The Annals of Christs Hospital gave any information on the
influence of the Royal Mathematical School on the general development of modern (real)
education in Europe, and that as a matter of fact, Christs Hospital served as a radiating
centre for similar schools in France, Russia and Germany (Hans, 1951b, p. 214). If those
statements were true, then it is interesting that in the recent 634-page Handbook of the
History of Mathematics Education (Karp & Schubring, 2014) there is no mention of Christs
Hospital or of the Royal Mathematical School.
Hanss Claims. The following is a five-point summary of the claims put forward by
Hans (1951b) after he had analyzed the influence of RMS on the spread of modern
mathematics education in Europe (p. 213), together with additional comments that we wish
to make on the extent to which Hanss thesis has been addressed by modern writers:
1. The RMS quickly became known to Louis XIV, and inspired the French monarch to
create, in June 1682, three companies of gardes de la marine, at Toulon, Rochfort
and Brest, in which boys from the nobility and from the middle-class were recruited
for preparation for service in the French navy. The course of study for these gardes
de la marine included mathematics, hydrography, drawing, naval construction,
fencing and dancing, and each prospective graduate was required to pass an oral
examination supervised by an outside authority. Those who passed were placed on
ships as gardes du pavillon, or marine apprentices (Hans, 1951b, pp. 214215).
According to Hans (1951b), this scheme was identical with the structure and training
at RMS in Christs Hospital.
2. According to Hans (1951b), the so-called oratorian schools in France established
similar courses, and in 1792 teachers in those schools helped the Convention to
create the national system of central schools (p. 215).
3. The system of schools established by Saint Jean Baptiste De la Salle in France and
Ireland had a direct link to RMS, because De la Salle was advised by the exiled
former King James II, who, assisted by Samuel Pepys, had helped persuade King
Charles II, to agree to the establishment of RMS.
4. Peter the Great of Russia visited England late in the 1690s for the purpose of
observing what was being done there in navigation education, and as a result two
young RMS graduates, Stephen Gwyn and Richard Grice, were appointed teachers
of navigation in the Moscow School of Navigation and Mathematics, which Peter
the Great established in 1701. According to Hans (1951b), that school, was
modelled in every respect on the Royal Mathematical School (p. 216). Although
Karp (2014) referred to the existence of mathematical and navigation schools in
Moscow and St. Petersburg in the early 1700s, and commented that the approaches
taken in some influential Russian geometry textbooks could be linked to Great
Britain, he did not refer specifically to Christs Hospital or to Hanss thesis. In
Karps and Vogelis (2010, 2011) edited collections on Russian mathematics

education there is no reference to Christs Hospital or to Hanss thesis.
5. Semler Francke, who established a short-lived Mathematische und Mechanische
Real Schule in Halle, Germany, in 1708, became aware of the structure and
curriculum of RMS and incorporated these in a Mathematische Realschule which he
opened in 1739. His ideas were passed on to Johann Julius Hecker, a pioneer of the
German Realschulen movement (Hans, 1951b, pp. 217219).
Despite the fact that during the period 16731708 the Mathematics Committee at Christs
Hospital struggled to find teachers who could teach what was an overly ambitious
mathematics and navigation curriculum to boys aged between 14 and 16 years, the reputation
of RMS spread internationally, and England was increasingly seen, on the Continent, as a
leader in maritime education and practice (Blanch, 1877).
Of course, education and military officials within those other nations did not know that
the RMS program was experiencing much difficulty in getting itself established within
Christs Hospital. They did know, though, that scholars like Isaac Newton had been involved
in the development of the RMS program, and they became aware that similar schools were
being established in Englandlike, for example, the Royal Hospital School at Greenwich
(Turner, 1980, 1990). Because they did not want their nations to fall behind, they moved to
create similar institutions in their own countries.
Humfrey Dittons New Mathematical School (NMS), which existed at Christs Hospital
between 1706 and 1715, was an abject failure. It was a product of the thinking of Isaac
Newton who saw the need in schools for higher mathematical study, especially studies in
which the language of instruction was Latin. Newton and Ditton wanted to cater for the
needs of boys who wished to advance in pure and applied forms of mathematics, and not
necessarily those forms related to navigation. From Newtons own perspective, his desire for
Christs Hospital to offer a curriculum comprising purer forms of mathematics to school
children who were from poor families and who were aged between 14 and 16 represented
something which would have advanced public thinking about the importance and purpose of
school mathematics. The idea that children of that age might cope with a rigorous curriculum
involving all of logarithms, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and mechanics was prophetic
and, from an educational perspective, revolutionary. It should be noted, too, that Humfrey
Ditton and Isaac Newton, the main players in this failed Christs Hospital experiment, could
not examine data on whether their proposed new curriculum might work at Christs
Hospital, because what they attempted to do had never been done before.
Outside of the Christs Hospital environment, then, the total failure of NMS, and the
struggles of RMS, were hardly known, even in and around London. The main message to
outsiders was that Christs Hospital was teaching mathematics beyond arithmetic to its
boys, and that other nations would need to do likewise if, in the future, they were to have any
chance of competing successfully with Great Britain in naval, trade and colonization activities.
The poignancy of the moment, from the perspective of the history of school
mathematics, needs to be recognized. The continuing existence of the RMS program at
Christs Hospital asserted that in the future mathematics for the peoplethat is to say,
mathematics for capable children irrespective of family backgroundneeded to go beyond
the rule of three, and even beyond the upper echelons of abbaco arithmetic. Should not
school mathematics courses in which key symbols, concepts, principles, and practices
Comparative Mathematics Education: Challenges and Pitfalls 85
associated with algebra, geometry, logarithms, and trigonometry, be available to all children
who were capable of benefiting from them?
Comparative Mathematics Education: Challenges and Pitfalls

Generalizing from data related to mathematics education in one country to situations in
other countries is always likely to be fraught with danger. Because the social, political,
cultural and historical fabrics of different nations inevitably differ in important ways,
educational structures in one nation are likely to be different from those in another. That said,
there are likely to be similarities as well as differences, and the desire for one nation to keep
up with, or to surpass, others in its educational offerings means that often structures in one
country can be very similar to those in other countries. As someone who specialized in
comparative education, Nicholas Hans saw it as his academic raison dtre to attempt to
recognize and substantiate within- and between-nation similarities in educational structures
and practices. Nevertheless, Alexander Karp (2014), an American mathematics education
historian who also grew up in Russia, clearly has not interpreted the Russian mathematics
education scene around 1700 in the same way as Hans. Indeed, in his analysis Karp did not
make any reference to Hanss generalizations, and did not mention Christs Hospital.
Geoffrey Howson, a distinguished British mathematics educator who authored A
History of Mathematics Education in England, made guarded references to Hanss (1951a,
1951b) generalizations about the influence of Christs Hospital (see, for example, Howson,
1982, pp. 3738). Howson (1982) admitted that the Mathematical School at Christs
Hospital attracted interest overseas (p. 37), but rather than accept Hanss generalizations
about the influence of RMS in Germany and Austria, he wrote, simply, that it has been
argued that schools established in Germany and Austria received some inspiration from the
work carried on at Christs Hospital (p. 38). Howson included a footnote to this statement,
and the sole reference in that footnote was Hans (1951b). Larry Stewart (1999) also referred
to Hans (1951b) when discussing the influence of RMS (see p. 140). However, although
Stewart argued that the existence of RMS helped England to establish naval superiority over
France, he did not mention Hanss thesis that France took steps to imitate the RMS program.
From a comparative education perspective, it is interesting that in 1695 Isaac Newton
thought that RMS should, in time furnish the nation with a more skilful sort of sailors,
builders of ships, architects, engineers and mathematical artists of all sorts, both by sea and
land, than France can at present boast of (quoted in Turnbull, 1961, p. 358). It needs to be
remembered that, from Samuel Pepyss vantage point, one of the specific aims of RMS was
to offer the kind of schooling to prospective seamen that would not only help establish naval
superiority for England, but would also be recognized by British politicians, scientists, and
literary critics of the day (Arbuthnot, 1770; Armytage, 1970). It follows that historians
should be concerned with whether the RMS program helped that aim to be realized. Did
Englands school mathematics programs ultimately produce better navigators than schools in
other nations? Is the common belief that in the nineteenth century British sailors came to
rule the waves (Mahan, 1898) more than just a belief and, if so, could any superiority over
other nations be linked to RMSs programs? Did other nations, seeking to counter British
aspirations, develop school mathematics programs which attempted not only to emulate but
also to surpass in quality the RMS program?
Any attempt to give definite answers to such questions is likely to generate
disagreement, with historians of one nation guarding their territory from those of others.
Often, there are even within-nation jealousies and biases between historians which need to be
recognized. Nevertheless, the attempt should be made to consider the big-picture
assumptions and structures guiding developments within and between nations. In this book
we have put forward evidence to support Hanss (1951a, 1951b) thesis, because, like Hans,
we believe that other nations did, deliberately, attempt to imitate the RMS program.
Somewhat paradoxically, we also believe that, during the period 16731708, attempts to
imitate and improve upon the RMS program were being made by officials in leading
Continental nationsat the very time when the RMS program was less than successful in
addressing the high agenda that Samuel Pepys had set for it.
One final comment on the early years of RMS is in order. All of the RMS masters who
were appointed between 1673 and 1708 were well-regarded mathematiciansfor, within
British mathematical circles, obtaining the appointment as RMS master was regarded as
more prestigious than any appointment in mathematics other than securing a position at the
University of Oxford or at the University of Cambridge. Given that that was the case, an
important message arising from the RMS experience between 1673 and 1708 was that
although a strong knowledge of mathematics was a necessary condition for being able to
teach mathematics beyond arithmetic well, it was not a sufficient condition.
References
of Reading.
W. Richardson.
Armytage, W. H. G. (1970). Four hundred years of English education (2nd ed.). Cambridge,
Blanch, W. H. (1877). The blue-coat boys: Or, school life in Christs Hospital, with a short
history of the Foundation. London, UK: E. W. Allen.
Brooks, B. C. (2010). Dethroning the kings of Cape Fear. Greenville, NC: Author.
Press.
Christs Hospital (1953). Christs Hospital four hundred years old. Worcester, UK: Author.
De La Bedoyere, G. (Ed.). (2006). The letters of Samuel Pepys. Woodridge, Suffolk, UK:
The Boydell Press.
Dijksterhuis, E. J. (1970). Simon Stevin, science in the Netherlands around 1600. The Hague,
The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff.
Great Britain. (1881). Eighth report of the Royal Commission on historical manuscripts.
Papers presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. London,
UK: Sir George Edward Eyre and William Spotiswoode.
Hughes, L. (2002). Peter the Great: A biography. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Springer.
Karp, A., & Schubring, G. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of the history of mathematics education.
New York, NY: Springer.
Karp, A., & Vogeli, B. (Eds.). (2010). Russian mathematics education: History and world
significance. London, UK: World Scientific.
Karp, A., & Vogeli, B. (Eds.). (2011). Russian mathematics education: Programs and
practices. London, UK: World Scientific.
Pennsylvania Press.
London, UK: Selinsgrove, Susquehanna University Press.
Pepys, S. (1677). Discourse to the Governours of Christs Hospitall. This was constructed at
different times and its various parts are dated October 22, November 6, November 8,
and November 13, 1677. Copy of what is, probably, the original is held in the Pepys
Library, Magdalene College, The University of Cambridge. Microfilm of that
manuscript can be viewed in the London Metropolitan Archives.
Perkins, P. (1681). The seamans tutor: Explaining geometry, cosmography, and trigonometry.
... Compiled for the use of the Mathematical School in Christs Hospital London.
London, UK: Obadiah Blagrave.
23(8), 581587.
Roberts, H. A. (1924). The records of the Amicable Society of Blues and its predecessors
from 1629 to 1895. Cambridge, UK: W. Lewis.
Simon, J. (1979). Private classical schools in eighteenth-century England: A critique of Hans.
History of Education, 8, 179191.
Stephenson, N. (Ed.). (1674). A mathematical compendium, or useful practices in
arithmetick, geometry and astronomy, geography and navigation, embattelling (sic??),
and quartering of armies, fortification and gunnery, gauging and dyalling. Explaining
the logarithms, with indices; Nepairs rods or bones; making of movements and the
collected out of the notes and papers of Sir Jonas Moore. London, UK: Nathaniel
Brooke.
Stephenson, N. (1705). A mathematical compendium, collected out of the notes and papers of
Jonas Moore. London, UK: Author.
Taylor, E. G. R. (1954). The mathematical practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England 1485
Pickering.
Cambridge, UK: The Royal Society/Cambridge University Press.
White, J. (2011). The invention of the secondary curriculum. New York, NY: Palgrave
Macmillan.
commoditization of knowledge. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Willmoth, F. (1993). Sir Jonas Moore: Practical mathematics and restoration science.
Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press.
Chapter 5
Developments in RMS Curricula 16731798
Abstract: Modern concepts of intended curriculum, implemented curriculum, and

received curriculum are used in an analysis of RMS curriculum development during the
period 16731798. Although early RMS intended curricula were framed in terms of topics
deemed to be appropriate for prospective navigators, RMS masters implemented a
curriculum by which the boys prepared cyphering books which summarized what they were
studying. From the outset the received curriculumwhat the students experienced and
learned from the implemented curriculawas assessed by external examiners who visited
Christs Hospital from time to time, and by experienced and reputable navigators associated
with Trinity House, an independent, semi-government naval authority. Analysis reveals that
both the RMS students and their masters struggled to cope with unrealistic curricular
expectations, with the students being expected to learn too much, too quickly. When, during
the period 16731708, the RMS program was seen to be failing, it was the masters who were
blamed.
Keywords: Christs Hospital, Ciphering, Cyphering, History of school mathematics, Imple-

mented curriculum, Intended curriculum, Navigation cyphering book, Received curriculum
In this chapter the concepts of intended curriculum, implemented curriculum, and

received curriculum (Westbury, 1980) are applied in an analysis of the RMS curriculum
between 1673 and 1798. Elsewhere (Clements & Ellerton, 2015), we have argued that,
traditionally, persons investigating the history of school mathematics curricula have too often
focused almost exclusively on evidence related to intended curricula gained from textbooks
or from official documents printed by colleges, schools, institutions, or systems of education.
That focus has been held to be sensible by those investigating the early history of school
mathematics in Great Britain between 1500 and 1850 because, it has been assumed, it was
impossible to get suitable data from other sources.
In recent years, however, a handful of scholars has gained access to substantial
collections of students handwritten cyphering books which were prepared by ordinary
students in Great Britain in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Thus, for
example, the Ellerton-Clements collection has, at the time of writing, 135 cyphering books
prepared in the United Kingdom, and the Mathematical Association, in England, and John
Denniss (2012), hold even larger collections of British cyphering books. Greater access to
these data has stimulated fresh considerations of the history of school mathematics in the
United Kingdom, and scholars have begun to look for cyphering books among records in
archives such as those in the London Metropolitan Archives, the British Library, libraries at
the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford, and the Caird Library within the
National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London. Undoubtedly, too, there are many old
cyphering books lying deep in old chests in attics in private homes and, in time, some of
these will be added to existing large collections.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_5
90 5. Developments in RMS Curricula 16731798
We have argued that histories of school mathematics should pay attention to the
distinction between intended curricula (as can be investigated through textbooks and official
documents of education institutions) and implemented curricula (as can be investigated
mainly through cyphering books) (Clements & Ellerton, 2015; Ellerton & Clements, 2012,
2014; Hertel, 2016). As Lao Genevra Simons (1936) once pointed out, evidence of the
content and sequence of implemented curricula provided by cyphering books is
unmistakable (p. 588). It is difficult to counter an argument that what a student wrote on a
daily basis in his or her cyphering book corresponded to the implemented curriculum of that
students teacher for that student. Although our conclusions on this matter have been recently
challenged by Alexander Karp (2015), Karp offered no evidence that he has ever devoted
time to finding or analyzing cyphering books.
Analyses have revealed that sometimes there have been topics covered extensively in
textbooks but hardly at all in the cyphering books which were prepared by students who had
access to those textbooks (Clements & Ellerton, 2015). That observation prompted the
conclusion that, from a history-of-school mathematics perspective, the set of topics covered
in textbooks, and syllabuses in official institutional or system-wide documents, were not
more important (and, indeed, from the perspective of what students actually did when
studying mathematics, were less important) than what the students wrote in their cyphering
books.
In this chapter we examine patterns of curriculum development within the Royal
Mathematical School from 1673 to 1798 (1798 being the last year of William Waless period
as RMS master).
The Struggle to Define a Satisfactory Intended Curriculum

The minutes recorded for a meeting of the General Court of Christs Hospital held in
December 1677 state that the Court decided to recommend, as a result of discussions at
special meetings held on October 22, November 6th, 8th and 13th, and December 3rd, that
there was a need for the Hospital to develop an official, and tightly-defined syllabus for its
Royal Mathematical School, so that all the boys would be taught essential material rather
some one thing, some another, some things unnecessary, while more necessary are
omitted. The Court agreed that the definition of what should be taught should not have been
left to the judgment of the RMS master, who may not have been an experienced seaman, but
rather should be developed by mathematical experts and experienced seamen (see Defect the
2nd in the Institution, and its Remedy, in Appendix A to this book).
In making that point the Court adopted a patronizing tone by stating that the first RMS
master, John Leeke, was no practiced seaman and therefore ought not to pretend to more
than his teaching in the best means what others of greater experience shall determine to be
necessary, lest the children should otherwise be burdened with things they have no present
use of, and consequently what they must therefore forget (Christs Hospital, minutes of the
General Court, December 3rd, 1677). Historical perspective suggests that it was decidedly
unfair that from the outset Leeke had been left to decide what he might teach to 40 boys aged
between 12 and 16. He had been left to second-guess what Trinity House examiners would
be looking for when they examined boys who, Leeke would decide, were ready to be
apprenticed. Any blame to be attached for the fact that a well-defined RMS syllabus had not
been established from the beginning must rest with the President of Christs Hospital, John
The Struggle to Define a Satisfactory Intended Curriculum 91
Frederick, with Samuel Pepys and Jonas Moore, and with others who established the RMS
programand certainly not with John Leeke.
The First Statement of an RMS Intended Curriculum

In November 1673 a series of meetings was held in John Fredericks home at which
details relating to the new Royal Mathematical Foundation at Christs Hospital were
discussed (Jones, 2015). It is remarkable that at those meetings there appears to have been no
discussion of the intended curriculum beyond a statement that the children would be
instructed in the art of arithmetick and navigation (Christs Hospital, minutes of the
Mathematics Committee, November 8th and November 19th, 1673).
The first elaboration of intended curriculum came in an unexpected wayin August,
1675, 11 masters, wardens and assistants of Trinity House wrote to the governors of Christs
Hospital informing them that they had impartially examined Benjamin Walters, the first
RMS student whom Leeke sent to Trinity House for examination, and had found him to be
fully qualified for being initiated into the practice of the art of navigation and bound out as an
apprentice (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, August 21st, 1675). Before
listing the topicsthe school called them articles of instructionwhich Trinity House
examiners had assessed, the 11 signatories commented on the extraordinary abilities and
industry of Mr John Leeke, present school master for the mathematics. Leeke must have felt
that his approaches to teaching RMS students had been successful.
The authors of the document prepared by Trinity House stated that their evaluation had
been based on their assessment of the knowledge of the student in the following 10 topics:
1. The principles of geometry with the practice thereof in describing lines, angles,
parallels, chords, sines, tangents, secants, triangles, and all sorts of plane
geometrical figures by a plain ruler and compass.
2. The divisional and proportional section of lines by the use of the diagonal scale and
the rule of three in lines, with the dividing of the circumference of a circle and the
description of the scale of chords, hours, rhumbs and longitude.
3. Decimal arithmetic with the composition and extraction of the square root.
4. The doctrine of the plane straight-lined triangle with the use of the natural tables of
sines, tangents and secants.
5. Propositions of the Julian calendar, with the common rules for finding the course of
the Sun, Moon and tides.
6. A general rule for finding the latitude by the Sun or fixed stars.
7. Questions of plane sailing with the use of the plane sea chart.
8. The use of logarithms and tables of artificial sines and tangents.
9. The use of Gunters scale.
10. The projecting of the sphere in circles or globes on a plane, diverse ways, with the
rule of projecting all sorts of maps.
Over the next 125 years there would be numerous changes in the RMS intended curriculum,
but this early list of 10 topics established a baseline. That said, there were still some
important unanswered questions about the intended curriculum. Was it intended that all
topics be covered equally thoroughly, or were some more important than others? To what
depth should the topics be covered? Was there any order in which the topics should be
taught? Presumably, the Trinity House verbal examinations were to be conducted in the
English language, but were there any expectations with respect to RMS graduates being able
to read mathematical and navigational treatises written in Latin? And, were these 10 topics
the only topics to be covered by the RMS master? What about algebra, or spherical triangles
or spherical trigonometry (after all, a ship sails on, approximately, a spherical surface)? What
about traverse sailing, great-circle sailing, Mercators sailing, oblique sailing, fortification,
gunnery, and possible methods for finding longitude when at sea? What about the use of
important navigational instruments, or methods of technical drawing (needed for sketching
coastlines and headlands), or methods of keeping a journal during a voyage? All of those
would feature, at some stage, in future RMS curricula.
Furthermore, among those who signed the statement was a certain S. Pepys, and there
is considerable doubt whether Pepys himself knew enough mathematics and technical aspects
of navigation to be regarded as a well-qualified examiner (see Chapter 3 of this book). Were
there others among the 11 signatories who knew even less about the 10 topics than Pepys?
It is important here to draw attention to the scope of Leekes achievement during the
first 16 months of his appointment. Benjamin Walters was only 14 years of age when he was
examined by Trinity House personnel, and probably when he began the RMS course he had
not even studied elementary topics like vulgar fractions and decimal fractions (Clements &
Ellerton, 2015). To bring this boy to the stage where he could cope with a one-on-one
assessment of the above topics in such a short space of time was a noteworthy achievement.
It is likely that the Trinity House examiners had gained the impression that a similar
gradient of learning might be possible for all RMS boys. It would not be long before Trinity
House would learn that that was not the case.
The 1677 Turnaround and Subsequent Inactivity with Curriculum Development

Within two years of Trinity Houses glowing endorsement of the work of John Leeke,
the first RMS master found himself on the defensive. It was Samuel Pepys who led the attack
on what had been achieved by RMS during the first four years of its existence. In the second
institutional defect which was listed in an October-December 1677 evaluation statement (in
which 16 alleged defects and 16 associated remedies were identified), there was a call
for Jonas Moore to finalize, with all convenient speed, what was called a method of
mathematics learningbut what was really meant, it seems, was a suitable textbook. The
minutes of the General Court declared (original spelling is retained):
Sir Jonas Moore being present in Court did againe declare that he would with all
convenient speed finish a Method of Mathematical Learning for the said children,
and the Court, desiring to know of him how long he conceived it would be before
the same might be prepared, he was pleased to answer that he hoped within a
fortnights time or thereabouts to compleat the greatest parte thereof. (Christs
Hospital, minutes of the General Court, November 21st, 1677)
Moore did not keep his promise and, after his death in 1679, the quest to produce a Method
of Mathematical Learning was taken on by Peter Perkins (who succeeded John Leeke as
RMS master). Perkins enlisted the help of his brother, of John Flamsteed, and of Edmond
Halley, but the outcome would be a very expensive book which was never accepted as a
work which should define the recommended syllabus or method of mathematical learning for
RMS. It was not until the early 1690s that the need for a formally-stated intended curriculum
would re-emerge as an issue.
Throughout the 1680s the curriculum followed was not that outlined in the
Moore/Perkins/Flamsteed/Halley text. Ironically, when Edward Paget was appointed RMS
master in June 1682 he was asked to follow a curriculum which comprised exactly the same
sequence of 10 topics, with exactly the same words used, as had been outlined by the 11
Trinity House masters, wardens and assistants back in August 1675 (see, Christs Hospital,
minutes of the General Court, June 14th, 1682). Paget promised to do that.
However, an important development occurred early in Pagets tenure as RMS master.
Minutes of the Mathematics Committee reveal that in February 1683, Paget was not only
asking students to learn the 10 topics, but also the following four topics:
1. The whole art and science of arithmetic from the rule of three;
2. The principles and practice of drawing;
3. The use and application of mathematical instruments;
4. The making of proper observations of the rising and setting of the Sun and the
Moon.
Paget asked the Mathematics Committee to peruse the topics listed in the curriculum, and to
consider whether some clauses may be added and some taken away as not useful for the
childrens instruction (Christs Hospital, minutes of the Mathematics Committee, March
29th, 1683). However, members of the Mathematics Committee declined Pagets request,
despite the obvious importance of each of the four extra topics for students in a school
which was supposed to be preparing students in the art of arithmetick and navigation
(Christs Hospital, minutes of the Mathematics Committee, November 8th, 1673).
Later in this chapter it will be shown that for the next 13 years Paget required his
students to prepare navigation cyphering books based on the 10-topic curriculum that had
been outlined in 1675. The extent to which he also asked them to learn the four extra topics is
not known, because, as far as we know, there is no extant navigation cyphering book
showing what Pagets RMS students actually studied during his period as RMS master.
In 1694 Isaac Newton was severely critical of the curriculum which Paget had
followedNewton referred to it as the old curriculum (see, Turnbull, 1961, pp. 357
367)and at first was unaware that his protg, Edward Paget, had continued to implement
it during the past 12 years. To be fair to Paget, it should be mentioned that at the time he was
appointed he had been asked to follow that syllabus; furthermore, he did make some
changesfor example, in 1691 he was commended by the General Court for supporting the
idea of a special textbook on algebra being printed by the school (Christs Hospital, minutes
of the General Court, July 3, 1691). It is ironic that when, in 1694, Isaac Newton criticized
the sequencing and logic of what he referred to as the old curriculum he was directly
criticizing a curriculum which had been put forward and approved by 11 Trinity House
personnelof whom Samuel Pepys was oneback in August 1675.
An Intended Curriculum Based on Recommendations of Mathematicians

In 1694 three distinguished professors of mathematicsIsaac Newton at the University
of Cambridge, and John Wallis and David Gregory at the University of Oxford, were
consulted by Christs Hospital on what might be a suitable intended curriculum for the Royal
Mathematical School. All three professors generously offered responses, and Isaac Newtons
response, in particular, was set out in considerable detail (the complete text is given in
Appendix B to this book). After Edward Paget resigned as RMS master, the next appointee,
Samuel Newton, was required to sign off on a long list of points defining what he could and
could not do as RMS masterand within that list was a statement of intended curriculum
which closely followed the recommendations put forward by Isaac Newton. The 10 topics
were (original spelling is retained):
1. Arithmetick in integers, vulgar fractions and decimals, proportionall numbers,
naturall and artificiall, in symbolls of unknown numbers and equations.
2. Geometry speculative and practicall in planes and solids.
3. The application of arithmetick to geometry in determining and protracting lines,
angles, and figures, by numbers naturall and artificiall, symbolls of numbers, and
tables of sines and tangents.
4. The description and properties of figures in perspectivethe arte of drawing and
designing.
5. The use of the best instruments in working by proportionalitytakeing angles,
heights and distances, and measuring planes and solids.
6. The doctrine of the globes and the rudiments of geography, hydrography, and
astronomy.
7. The descriptions of the globe in perspective commonly called projections and the
art of making charts and maps.
8. The doctrine of spherical triangles with their application in projecting and
computing all the useful problems in geography, astronomy and navigation.
9. A full application of the learning aforesaid to navigation particularly to the severall
hypotheses thereof, commonly called plane, great circle, and Mercators sailing. As
also, the use of charts and sea instruments for observation, and their application to
finding the latitude, difference of longitude, amplitude, azimuth, and variation of
the compass by the Sun or stars, with the knowledge of the tydes and Roman
calender, and the method of keeping journals and of finding the difference of the
longitude of shores by the ecclipses of Jupitors satellites.
10. The principles of reasoning about force and motion, particularly about the five
mechanical powers, the stress of ropes and timber, the power of winds, tydes,
bullets and bombs, according to their velocity and direction against any plane, the
line which a bullet describes; the force of weights and springs; and the power of
fluids to press against immersed bodies and bear them up, and to resist their
motions; with the application of this learning to sea affaires, for contriving well and
managing easily, speedily, and dexterously, levers, pulleys, skrews, anchors,
pumps, rudders, guns, sails, and other tackle judging truly of the advantages and
disadvantages of vessells, havens, forts, engines and new projects, and observing
and discovering what ever tends to make a ship endure and sail well, or otherwise to
correct or improve navigation.
(Christs Hospital, minutes of the Committee of Schools, April 9th, 1695)
On accepting the offer of appointment as RMS master, Samuel Newton indicated that
he was not altogether confident that his RMS boys would have the time to cope with all 10
topics, given that the boys would stay within RMS for not more than 18 months. He
identified the tenth topic, concerning force and motion, as one which might especially be a
matter of concern. That tenth topic was, of course, close to Isaac Newtons heart, for it was
obviously connected to his recently-published and groundbreaking Principia.
It did not take long for Samuel Newton to confirm that his prediction that the General
Courts curriculum expectation would be unrealistic was right, and in November 1695 he
resigned as RMS master. A Committee of Governors quickly reacted by asking him to
withdraw his resignation, and it supported the withdrawal of the tenth topic from the intended
curriculum, despite opposition to that by Isaac Newton, Samuel Pepys, and Trinity House (all
of whom wanted all 10 topics to remain). The Mathematics Committee agreed to recommend
that the School purchase a class set of Samuel Newtons An Idea of Geography and
Navigation (Newton, 1695). Samuel Newton then withdrew his resignation, and a new
intended curriculum was agreed upon which, although it also had 10 topics, did not include
the one on force and motion. The following sequence of 10 topics, which was accepted by
Samuel Newton, defined the intended curriculum for the next 13 years:
1. Arithmetic in integers, vulgar and decimal fractions, the extraction of roots, square
roots and the use of logarithms.
2. The principles of geometry in the delineation and mensuration of planes and solids,
with the application thereof.
3. Plane and spherical trigonometry, geometrically, arithmetically performed in the
cases of rectangular and oblique-angular triangles.
4. The use of the globes, celestial and terrestrial, with the stereographical projection of
the sphere upon the plane of any great circle.
5. Spherical triangles applied to the solution of all useful problems in astronomy for
finding the Suns amplitude and azimuth, and the variations of the compass, as also
the solutions of all propositions in geometry in all the four various situations of
planes commonly called great circle sailing.
6. Plane sailing, viz. the construction and use of the plane sea chart, in all the cases
thereof, and the working of traverses, both without ports and with ports, also
the solution of all plane sailing questions, geometrically, arithmetically, and
instrumentally, with absolute directions for keeping a journal at sea, and to correct
the ships dead reckoning, by observing the sun or any fixed star upon the meridian,
with the application of plane triangles to oblique sailing and the doctrine of
currents.
7. Mercators sailing to be done in all respects in plane sailing in Article 6 with the
true use of the log line and the minute glass.
8. To find the quantity of the degree under any great circle, the construction and use of
instruments proper for observing the latitude at sea, as the cross staff, quadrants and
other necessary instruments, as the sector and Gunters rule.
9. The construction and use of right lines and circular maps, practice of drawing for
laying down the appearances of lands, towns, and other objects worthy of notice.
10. The use of the calendar, with the common rules of finding the course of the Sun,
Moon and tides, with so much of gunnery as is necessary for.
(Quoted in Jones, 2015, p. 128)
Of the three sets of 10 topics which we have mentioned (from 1675, 1695 and 1696), the
third was the most logically and mathematically well sequenced. That said, considering that
the RMS boys would be devoting their attentions to it for 18 months only, from a time-
available-for-instruction perspective it was long and demanding. The governors, faced with
the need to pacify Samuel Newton, and recognizing that the mathematicians curriculum was
too long and too difficult, agreed to Samuel Newtons request that the school purchase a new
class set of his An Idea of Geography and Navigation, but for much of the remainder of
Samuel Newtons tenure the Trinity House examiners were critical of the quality of the RMS
boys learning. The Trinity House examiners thought that the boys were not learning quickly
enough, but Samuel Newton did not change his contention that there was too much material
to be learned in too little time. The matter came to a head in 1708, when Samuel Newton,
facing extensive criticisms by Trinity House examiners, resigned.
Early in 1709 James Hodgson was informed that his application to be RMS master had
been successful. Details of his 46-year period as master are provided in Chapter 6, and here it
suffices to say that he quickly managed to establish that the RMS boys were not ready to
learn any parts of the syllabus in Latin. Hodgson immediately began to prepare a textbook
that matched the RMS requirements, and although the two volumes of that large work, titled
A System of the Mathematics, were not published until 1723 there is evidence that Hodgson
increasingly made use of the material he was writing. Between 1723 and 1750 Hodgsons A
System of the Mathematics provided an intended curriculum that seemed to satisfy all
concerned, and a similar statement is true for the period 17501858, when John Robertsons
The Elements of Navigation was accepted as defining the de facto RMS intended curriculum.
Although lists of topics were defined from time to time (see, e.g., Christs Hospital, 1785),
these lists were always consistent with the intended curriculum defined by Robertsons text.
The Cyphering Tradition and the Implemented Curriculum
Development of the Cyphering Tradition

Throughout the period 15521673 most boys at Christs Hospital who reached the age
of 10 had learned to read and to write. Their writing masters had expected them to prepare
cyphering bookssometimes called ciphering books, or copybooks, or copy books,
or workbooks, etc.as part of their learning process (Ellerton & Clements, 2012).
Although we know of no extant cyphering book prepared at Christs Hospital before
1718, there are some early British cyphering books that have survived. The Plympton
collection within the Butler Library at the University of Columbia in New York holds a 302-
page folio-sized cyphering book which Thomas Dixson prepared in Great Britain between
1630 and 1632. It has call number MS 511.1630, and is described in detail in Chapter 7 of a
text by Ellerton and Clements (2014). The British Library holds a smaller but nevertheless
impressive cyphering book prepared in 1658 by Michael Wickes (British Museum Additional
Ms. 45,513). Beginning to cypher was a rite de passage which marked progress from
elementary verbal arithmetic to more sophisticated written forms of arithmetic. A tradition
had developed by which selected childrenmostly boysbegan to prepare cyphering books
when they reached the age of 10. It was intended that these would become their books for
life, and when a student was making entries into a cyphering book only the best penmanship
and calligraphy were acceptable (Ellerton & Clements, 2012, 2014).
The content entered into most cyphering books focused on elementary arithmetic
featuring the Hindu-Arabic numerals0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9and a place-value
system which greatly facilitated written calculations using time-honored algorithms for the
four operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division (Bjarnadttir, 2014;
Hyrup, 2005, 2008, 2014; Jackson, 1906; Swetz, 2013; Van Egmond, 1976). But, not
everybody learned to calculate with the Hindu-Arabic numeralsduring the seventeenth
century only a small proportion of people in Great Britain learned to calculate using written
The Cyphering Tradition and the Implemented Curriculum 97
symbols, and children who could cope with the complexities of the Hindu-Arabic system
were regarded as ripe for apprenticeships in the worlds of commerce (Bidwell, 2013).
The crowning achievement, for a young learner, was to arrive at the point where he or
she would study and learn to apply the direct rule of three (also known as the golden
rule). This rule, which was concerned with relating ratios and proportions, especially with
respect to commercial contexts, had two important offshoots, the inverse rule of three and
the double rule of three, and students were expected to learn to identify which of the rules
would apply to given problems and then to use the appropriate rules to solve the problems.
Advanced students learned to apply the various forms of the rules of three to a wide range of
problemsin areas such as profit and loss, simple and compound interest, barter, and
discountand to do this before they had been introduced to percentages, common (or
vulgar) fractions, or decimal fractions (Bidwell, 2013; Clements & Ellerton, 2015).
The cyphering tradition incorporated much more than merely getting children to read
and write the names of numerals and to carry out the four elementary operations of
arithmetic. Throughout Western Europe, writing was regarded as an indispensable tool in
commerce and it was expected that the act of preparing a cyphering book not only enhanced
a childs ability to write well but also to develop an understanding of the concepts which
were under consideration. The cyphering tradition also included a recitation component by
which learners were not only expected to read and remember what they had written in their
books, but also to be able to explain, from memory and without hesitation, fundamental
principles behind what they had written and what they were about to write. At least once a
day a student would engage in a one-on-one recitation with the master, or his assistant (often
called an usher), and during recitation sessions a student might be asked to comment on
what he or she had written since the last recitation. This recitation process was designed to
encourage learners to work hard at remembering important numerical facts, concepts and
principles, and there was also an emphasis on being able to explain, clearly, how these could
be used in practice.
In summary, then, the cyphering tradition testified to a form of pedagogy which
combined individual, yet supervised, learning with follow-up evaluative sessions, usually
conducted in the form of one-on-one recitations. All entries in a cyphering manuscript
appeared in inkas handwritten notes, or problem solutions, or as illustrations. Headings
and sub-headings were presented in decorative, calligraphic style and, occasionally, water-
color illustrations were prepared. Typically, cyphering books were dedicated to setting out
rules and cases, and to presenting statements of, and solutions to, model examples and
exercises associated with a well-defined sequence of mathematical topics.
As the seventeenth century progressed small proportions of advanced students in
Western European nations learned about vulgar fractions, decimal fractions, and logarithms,
and how these might be linked with the rules of three to solve problems which arose not only
in commerce but also in measurement of lengths, areas, volumes, angles, and time (although
those generic terms were not often used). Since the methods could be used to simplify
calculations associated with problems in astronomy, navigation, gunnery, fortification, and
other aspects of military operations, RMS students were expected to learn to apply these
rules and techniques whenever they might be useful. Sharp rises in the numbers of
international trading and banking companies in Western European city-states had resulted in
the formation of vernacular schools across Europe in which reckoning masters taught boys,
especially those within merchant-class families, aspects of commercial mathematics,
accounting and writing.
The cyphering tradition was an international phenomenon, and the intended curriculum
derived from long-established traditions. The abbaco tradition, for example, is thought to
have been framed by Leonardo of Pisas (Fibonaccis) book Liber Abbaci, written around
1200 CE. This provided a carefully sequenced set of topics, the learning of which by a
significant proportion of students was thought to be related to the commercial well-being of a
nation (Ellerton & Clements, 2012; Swetz, 2013; Yeldham, 1926). Another curricular
tradition, one which derived from the writings of Johannes de Sacrobosco, a British and
French scholar in the first half of the thirteenth century, was based on a slightly different
sequence of arithmetic topics (Ellerton & Clements, 2014). Our analysis of various
collections of handwritten European and American cyphering manuscripts suggests that the
Abbaci, both the handwritten and the commercially-printed varieties, provided the most
widely-used model for cyphering books in Western Europe and in other nations, including
nations or colonies or states in South and North America.
Handwritten manuscripts were prepared long before commercially-printed textbooks
existed. After about 1200 CE, increasing numbers of students across Western Europe
prepared the handwritten books (Bjarnadttir, 2014). With the advent of commercial forms
of printing in the fifteenth century the cyphering tradition increasingly took on a modified
form, with handwritten manuscripts being conveniently copied from commercially-prepared,
printed texts (Carpenter, 1965; Hyrup, 2008, 2014; Jackson, 1906). During the period 1552
1673, most Western European students aged 10 years, or more than that, who learned
mathematics at school or with a private tutor, were expected to prepare cyphering books
(Bidwell, 2013).
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Italian merchants were the business
leaders of the Western world and the abbaco tradition initially held sway in the counting
houses of Florence, Milan, and Rome (Swetz, 1992). But its power was quickly sought after,
and incorporated, by merchants in major cities across Continental Europe (Bellhouse, 2005;
Long, McGee, & Stahl, 2009; Spiesser, 2004; Unger, 1888). Indeed, early in the seventeenth
century, in the city of Nuremberg alone, there were almost 50 reckoning schools in which
students created cyphering books (Swetz, 1987). Names given to masters who specialized in
performing calculations needed for business transactions, or in teaching others how to do
that, varied from nation to nation. In Italy, the masters were known as maestri dabbaco, in
France, maistre dalgorisme, in Germanic regions, rechenmeister, and in England, scrivener
(Ellerton & Clements, 2012; Howson, 1982; Ifrah, 2000; Swetz, 1987; Unger, 1888).
For many years it was accepted by scholars that the main European tradition was
introduced into Europe by Leonardo of Pisa, but in recent years that tradition has been
challenged. There is evidence that before 1200 there were features of the tradition already to
be found in parts of Southern Europe (Hyrup, 2005, 2014). Whatever the historical
antecedents wereand these probably differed in different European nationsit is almost
certain that when RMS was created at Christs Hospital, in 1673, the cyphering tradition, in
one form or another, more or less controlled how Western European school students who
were at least 10 years of age would be expected to learn arithmetic (Bidwell, 2013; Davis,
1960; Denniss, 2012; Ellerton & Clements, 2012; Jackson, 1906; Van Egmond, 1980;
Wardhaugh, 2012). This tradition was not introduced to RMS without challenge from
traditional classical scholars such as Samuel Pepys, Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton, but
most RMS boys had come through a Writing School in which the cyphering tradition had
long been dominant (City of London, 1840). The navigation cyphering books which RMS
students prepared would be more extensive than traditional cyphering booksthey included
sections such as technical drawing and the preparation of journals (Smith, 1985)but they
were still cyphering books.
Cyphering at Christs Hospital

Well before 1673 writing masters at Christs Hospital had been expected not only to
help their students learn to write well but also, specifically, to be able to present written
solutions to arithmetic tasks that fitted the description to the rule of three (Manzione, 1995;
Page, 1954). Most of the 10- to 14-year-old boys in the Writing School at Christs Hospital
would have prepared cyphering books which featured solutions to arithmetic tasks using
methods which could be readily applied in the commercial world into which many of the
boys would, ultimately, be apprenticed. After 1663, part of the salary of the writing master at
Christs Hospital was funded by a bequest from Thomas Barnes which specified that 10
pounds was to be paid annually to a schoolmaster for teaching them to write and cypher
(City of London, 1840, p. 135).
In most parts of Europe the use of the expression to the rule of three within
statements of intended curricula of schools indicated that either the abbaco intended
curriculum or the Sacrobosco intended curriculum had been adopted, and that an
implemented curriculum involving cyphering had been put in place. Given the fact that at
Christs Hospital writing masters had been expected to prepare large numbers of students for
apprenticeships as clerks, and that a good cyphering book was important evidenceperhaps
the most important evidencethat an applicant was well qualified to do clerical work, it makes
sense that some form of the cyphering tradition would have prevailed in the Writing School
at Christs Hospital. It would follow that in the early RMS years, almost all of the boys who
became Kings boys in RMS would have been familiar with the cyphering approach.
As far as we know, no cyphering book prepared within the Christs Hospital Writing
School is extant, but there is much circumstantial evidence pointing to the likelihood that
many such manuscripts were prepared. The arithmetic topics studied by boys who prepared
the books would have been sequenced according to what are now known as the abbaco and
Sacrobosco traditions (Ellerton & Clements, 2014), with students gradually being introduced
to increasingly complex money-related tasks involving reduction, exchange (of different
currencies), and the so-called rule of three. The students were also required to summarize
and remember aspects of various measurement systems, especially those related to
avoirdupois, troy and apothecaries weight (Clements & Ellerton, 2015).
In the Writing School at Christs Hospital, as in other schools which taught arithmetic
as part of their writing programs, the cyphering tradition came to be associated with a typical
classroom organizational structure which included a sequence of three pedagogical
components:
1. The teacher would prescribe what an individual student should do. Sometimes the
teacher would write the headings and the problems to be solved into a students
cyphering book (Dickens, 1850; Walkingame, 1785). Each student would prepare
for the next recitation session by learning the appropriate rules.
2. The student would then work individually at entering introductory statements, rules,
cases, and model examples into his or her cyphering book, and at finding tentative
solutions to set exercises. These tentative solutions would often be done on scraps of
paper, or on wooden surfaces, etc. The tentative solutions would be shown to the
teacher during the next recitation session and, if they were approved by the teacher,
the student would then complete his or her cyphering-book entries by neatly writing
in the solutions to the exercises. Sometimes the teacher provided a student with an
older, parent, cyphering book, or textbook, to show what was required. Writing
would always be done in ink, with a quill (Ellerton & Clements, 2012). Additional
exercises might be set at this stage.
3. The student would, in the next recitation session, show the teacher his or her
completed cyphering-book entries. It was expected that headings would be in fine
calligraphy, and general penmanship would be of a high quality. A cyphering book
was to be a guidebook for lifea text that could be consulted if and when the need
aroseand it was important that all entries be correct. During this same recitation
session a good teacher would ask for explanations of what had been written, and
would set tasks to be completed before the next recitation session.
The Cyphering Tradition and Boys Learning During the Early Years of RMS
There is no mention of the influence of anything resembling the cyphering tradition in
general histories of Christs Hospital (e.g., Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834), and neither is there
any mention of the tradition in Joness (2015) specific history of RMS. The writers of these
histories did not seem to be aware of what constituted the cyphering tradition or of the
pervasive influence that that tradition had had on school mathematicsnot only in Great
Britain but right across Western Europe. Therefore, they did not consider the possibility that
it affected the ways mathematics was taught and learned at different times in the history of
Christs Hospital. We believe that the tradition influenced school mathematics at Christs
Hospital throughout the period 15521800. Furthermore, circumstantial evidence points to
the conclusion that the influence was large (see, e.g., Christs Hospital minutes of the
General Court, September 26, 1678).
Cyphering during the first four years of RMSs existence. In December 1673 the
General Court of Christs Hospital asked masters of the Grammar School and the Writing
School to consider how the school timetable might be changed as a result of the creation of a
new school dealing with arithmetick and navigation having been established, and a
mathematics master having been appointed. Special Mathematics Committee meetings
were held, and on January 23, 1674 it was decided that the Writing master should make sure
that primers and copies dealing with arithmetick should be prepared beforehand so that
students would be well prepared for classes in mathematics and navigation. The RMS boys
would be expected to copy from primersthe idea seemed to be that Kings boys in the
Royal Mathematical Foundation would learn, on a daily basis, according to an approach
consistent with the cyphering tradition. Furthermore, there would be a weekly review, and
the childrens progress would be presented every Saturday in the form of a specimen to
the worthy Almoners (Christs Hospital, minutes of a meeting of a special committee,
January 23, 1674). This would have meant that, every Saturday, members of the Committee
of Almoners were to be shown draft pages of the RMS students cyphering books.
In February 1675, less than one year after John Leeke had become the first RMS master
at Christs Hospital, the school purchased 40 copies of Henry Gellibrands (1674) textbook
An Epitome of Navigation (Jones, 2015see p. 21). Before that purchase was made, Leeke
had had the unenviable task of teaching 40 RMS boys, aged between 12 and 16, a largely
undefined curriculum (but one which was supposed to be concerned with advanced
arithmetic and navigation) for 40 hours each week (Christs Hospital, General Court minutes,
November 20th, 1677). He knew that in the not-too-distant future the quality of his students
learning, and therefore of his teaching, would be tested by external experts based at Trinity
House. From a professional point of view, the situation could hardly have been more
threatening for him. It was not made any easier by the fact that the topics examined by
Trinity House did not correspond to the topics in Gellibrands (1674) book.
In fact, Leeke did not cope well with his teaching challenges (Christs Hospital,
minutes of the General Court, November 20th, 1677). At first, the boys did not even have a
textbook. When, in 1675, that situation changedas a result of the school purchasing the
class set of Gellibrands textthere was finally something from which the boys could easily
copy material into their cyphering books. We conjecture that having daily access to
Gellibrands (1674) text meant that both Leeke and his RMS boys developed some idea of
what the RMS intended curriculum was supposed to be. It is highly likely that the cyphering
tradition, with which both the boys and Leeke were familiar, combined with Gellibrands
text, became the basis for the first RMS intended and implemented curricula.
In fact, though, Leeke was rarely present in the same classroom as his RMS boys
because he devoted much of the RMS set class times to teaching private pupils in an annex
next to the main classroom. The RMS boys were left to be supervised by an ushersomeone
much less qualified than Leekeand this is likely to have affected the quality of the boys
learning. The ushers job was difficult, and it is not surprising that often the boys behavior
was unacceptable (Christs Hospital, General Court minutes, November 20th, 1677,
especially the notes on Defects 5 and 6, and the recommended Remedies). Once the boys
had access to Gellibrands (1674) text the situation would have become easier for Leeke and
for the usher, but the fact that Leeke continued to teach his private pupils during class hours
would not have encouraged the RMS boys to improve their general behavior.
Jonas Moores list of qualifications to be expected of the RMS mathematics
master. One of the major reasons why, towards the end of 1677, John Leeke lost his position
as RMS master was that he refused to agree to a ruling by the General Court that he be
present in the same room as his RMS students during normal school hours. The Bodleian
Libraries at the University of Oxford hold a letter, dated January 18th, 1678, from Jonas
Moore to fellow Mathematics Committee members listing the following four criteria which,
Moore believed, should be adopted when selecting Leekes replacement (Moore, 1678). The
order in which the criteria were listed was interesting. (Note that the original spelling and
wording have been retained.)
1. That he be a sober, discreet, and diligent person of good life, government and
conversation.
2. That he be a good scholar very well understanding the Latin and Greek
languages, to the end that the boys may be kept to, and furthered in, the Latin
tongue, and the master able to answer strangers if need be in that language.
3. That he doo write a very good scrivener-like hand, that during such tyme the
boys shall stay with him he may be to them as good as a writing master, that by
all their exercises and drawing of geometrical schemes and draughts they may
be educated to write and draw well and be fit to go to sea or abroad with those
commendable qualityes.
4. That he be an able and very good mathematician, well known in the theory and
practice of all its parts and soo be ready that no stranger from abroad or
practioner att home shall be able to baffle him, but on the contrary shall find his
abilityes to satisfaction. (Moore, 1678)
The General Court copied this letter into its minutes for January 25th, 1678. A modern reader
might note the omission of any criterion relating to the masters ability to teach effectively a
whole class of students simultaneouslyin the seventeenth century, teaching a whole class
simultaneously was not part of the cyphering tradition. What was important was that the
students prepare notes on important themes in a scrivener-like hand.
Teaching expectations placed on Peter Perkins, RMS master, 16781680. An
agreement which Peter Perkins was required to sign when he took up his appointment in
1678 reflected the General Courts determination to overcome weaknesses which it believed
had been manifest during John Leekes period of tenure as RMS master. Perkins was not
permitted to take private pupils and was not allowed to have boarders in the house provided
by the school. He was required to remain in the main RMS classroom during normal school
hours, and was expected not only to set nightly exercises but also, each morning, to check the
students written solutions to what had been set (Jones, 2015).
Perkins, who was expected to be present in the RMS classroom for eight hours each
school day, struggled to maintain discipline. In addition to being present throughout the day
he was expected to assist in curriculum development and, upon Jonas Moores death in
August 1679, he was faced with the challenge of completing a textbookspecifically written
for the RMS programwhich Moore had begun. Moore had repeatedly promised to
complete such a book quickly, but he never did. There is no evidence that Perkins was using
the class set of Gellibrands (1674) book, but the demands on Perkins timebeing present
with the boys for eight hours each day, creating homework exercises each day, communicating
these exercises to the boys (at a time when blackboards did not exist), checking each boys
responses to the previous days homework, and finishing the writing task which Jonas Moore
had failed to completewere substantial. Perkins made progress, but he did not complete the
writing task before he died, in December 1680. He had been RMS master for only two years.
Although there is no direct evidence that during his period of tenure Perkins asked
students to prepare cyphering books, it is likely that that is what happened. Homework
exercises would have been set during recitation sessions, and student responses to the
previous nights homework work have been checked during the same sessions. It would have
been almost impossible for him to teach the RMS boys as a whole class, even if he had
wanted to do that, for they would have been at different stages in their knowledge and
understanding of relevant mathematical facts and principles. Furthermore, often, RMS
students were not in class during class hours because they were expected to attend lectures on
astronomy or geometry at Gresham College; some were not in London, but were with John
Flamsteed at the Greenwich Observatory where they were required to gather and analyze
astronomical data. During Perkinss time, RMS boys were also expected to observe and
record the rising and setting of the Sun and the apparent movement of the Moon and stars
across the sky, data then essential for calculating position at sea (Jones, 2015, p. 65), and for
that purpose a special platform was erected on the roof of the Royal Mathematical School.
Given all the extra responsibilities placed on Perkins, and the effect that those responsibilities
would have had on how he dealt with each of his students, it seems likely that the most
sensible teaching approach for him would have been to embrace the cyphering approach
fully.
Dr Robert Woods Tenure as RMS Master, 16811682. Dr Robert Wood was a
highly regarded mathematician who, on appointment, promptly paid an usher to supervise his
RMS class while, often, he himself would be absent. The usher was, it would be claimed,
frequently drunk and not always in command of the mathematical material which the
students were expected to learn (Jones, 2015). Woods defence was that he was often ill, and
that that prevented him from always being present during class hours.
It was not until 1681 that the textbook originally promised by Jonas Moore was
completedwith the help of John Flamsteed, Edmond Halley, and Peter Perkinss brother
but the school would not purchase a class set because it was deemed to be too expensive.
And, therefore, the textbook problem was not solved.
There is no direct evidence that students prepared cyphering books during Woods
tenure, but given Woods attitudes to his work, and his failing health, it is difficult to imagine
that any other approach to classroom management would have been used. Members of the
Mathematics Committee and external examiners appointed by Trinity House were extremely
unhappy with the way Wood handled his responsibilities, and in April 1682 he resigned as
RMS master after having held the position for less than two years.
Edward Pagets efforts to consolidate cyphering practices as an RMS standard.
Edward Paget, originally at the University of Cambridge, was a youthful protg of Isaac
Newton. He accepted the position as RMS master despite the fact that he had to agree to a
long list of requirementsfor example, he was expected to be in class with the RMS boys
during normal school hours, and he was expected to set and check exercises daily for boys.
He also agreed to follow a tightly-defined intended curriculum, which was in place during his
13 years as RMS master. But, soon after he took up his position at Christs Hospital he
arranged for the school to purchase big folio-paper bookes into which the boys would write
notes (Christs Hospital, minutes of the Schools Committee, January 18th, 1683). At the
outset, it seems, Paget decided that he would require his students to prepare cyphering books.
Minutes of the General Court (Christs Hospital, July 3, 1691) record that between
1682 and 1691 Paget succeeded in implementing a form of cyphering as standard practice
within his RMS program. The most relevant minute stated (original spelling is retained):
Pursuant to an order of the Court of the 15th of May last this Comte again took into
consideration the extraordinary paines and service which Mr Paget the
mathematical master takes (beyond what he is oblidged to) in instructing the boyes
in his school to make draughts yearely against new yeares day to present to the
King and other great personages, and after long and serious debate the Comte was
very sensible that the said draughts is much for the advantage and reputation of
this Hospitall. And as to considering that Mr Paget for 8 years hath performed this
Service and as yet never had any reward for his paines the Comte put it to the
question whether he should be presented with 20: 25: or 30 guineas. It was by vote
agreed that he should have 25 guineas given him as an acknowledgement of his
great paines and ingenuity in the said business for time past, which is to be
reported to the Court for their approbation. This Court agreed that for the service
mentioned in the Report and other good services performed by him, forthwith to
present him with 25 guineas. He being called into the Court and acquainted
therewith gave the Court thanks.
By 1691, then, it had become a well-established practice that RMS boys would prepare what
we have called navigation cyphering books, and that at the beginning of each year drafts of
parts of these would be shown to the reigning monarch. This is consistent with the images
prepared by Antonio Verrio in the 1680s showing Christs Hospital blue-coat boys, at the
feet of the monarch, holding pages which, presumably, were draft pages which might be
included in their final cyphering books (Blanch, 1877; Jones, 2015).
By getting the Mathematics Committee to support this high-level display of cyphering
books Paget had cleverly solved the problem of how to cope with the task of teaching
mathematically challenging material to boys between the age of 13 and 16 in a way which
would require a minimum of effort from the teacher. He simply required them to copy
material from a textbook. The boys knew that they would have to present some of their
written material to the monarch, and that this would mean that what they did was likely to be
scrutinized by numerous celebrities. Almost certainly, this would have encouraged the boys
to make sure that all the pages they prepared would feature their best handwriting,
calligraphic headings, and diagrams. Paget would have known that there was also the added
bonus that once all the draft pages had been prepared these could be combined into cyphering
books which would go a long way towards convincing those who might take the boys as
apprentices that those who had prepared them were industrious and capable of fine work.
We do not know whether Paget developed a recitation regime whereby, on a daily
basis, he carefully checked what the boys wrote in their cyphering books, and questioned
them in an attempt to develop their understandings of difficult concepts and principles. If he
did that, then his cyphering approach may well have been efficient and successful. But, in the
early 1690s, towards the end of his tenure as RMS master, Paget himself was not always
present in the classroomhe took two extended stays of several months each, during term-
time, in Flanders, and unsuccessfully applied for leave for a third time (Christs Hospital,
minutes of the General Court, June 28th, 1694). Each time Paget arranged for a replacement
to supervise his class during his absence, and he seemed to assume that if the boys were
merely copying material then his presence was not vitally important.
The cyphering approach during Samuel Newtons period as RMS master. In April
1695 Samuel Newton was appointed RMS master and he held that position for over 13 years.
In July 1695 his book An Idea of Geography and Navigation was published (Newton, 1695),
and that included material on the construction and use of the plane and true sea-chart,
solutions of all nautical problems, and several other things necessary in navigation (Jones,
2015, p. 124). When agreeing to the terms of his appointment he had indicated that, as an
experienced teacher, he believed that the syllabus that he would be expected to adopt was
overly ambitious, especially the section on force and motion. Although Samuel Newton
agreed to try to teach the prescribed syllabus (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General
Court, April 9th, 1695), the curricular expectations weighed sufficiently heavily on him that
on November 14th, 1695, he resigned. He was persuaded by the governors to withdraw his
resignation (Christs Hospital, minutes of the General Court, November 19th, 1695), but this
did not stop Samuel Pepys from writing to Christs Hospital, on November 29th, 1695,
complaining that Mr Newton has not even attempted to teach several sections of the
syllabus (quoted in Jones, 2015, p. 126).
The school did try to support Samuel Newton. On two occasions it purchased class sets
of Newtons An Idea of Geography and Navigation as well as copies of a book on Euclids
Elements. It also made available to Newton some copies of Moores Compendium. Samuel
Newton probably used these books as the basic texts from which his students copied material
when preparing drafts of their navigation cyphering books for presentation to the reigning
monarchs (either King William III or Queen Anne). When, on May 8th, 1696, a new syllabus
was put in place which did not include any reference to Isaac Newtons section on force and
motion, it was clear that Samuel Newton had won a small victory. He was never forgiven,
though, by Samuel Pepys or by Trinity House examiners.
An incident which occurred in August 1696 generated data which suggested that
Samuel Newton was struggling to keep up with the demands of his position. The incident has
been related in the following way by Clifford Jones (2015):
Pepys, still seeking evidence of poor discipline and standards at Christs Hospital,
was probably surprised when, in August, two boys, Peter Mitton and Joseph
Taylor, who had played truant for three days, arrived at his house to make a formal
complaint about Samuel Newton. However, Pepys insisted that this was not a
matter for him to deal with and told the boys to go back to school and raise the
issue with the Governors there. ... [The boys] had alleged that they were being
worked too hard, with too many exercises to be done in the evenings. On
questioning by the Committee, Newton admitted that he had been using the boys to
copy out problems for use in the Mathematical School, and they were complaining
about being made to do this at lunchtimes and after supper. The pupils told the
Governors that sometimes they had been given so much to do that they had to stay
up until midnight. (p. 129)
Two points emerge from this story: first, Newton found the prescribed syllabus so extensive
that he felt he had to resort to extreme practices if his RMS boys were to have any chance, in
the time available to them, of learning what the Trinity House examiners would expect them
to have learned; and second, without resorting to inequitable practices, which were obviously
unfair for some students, Newton found it almost impossible to meet the expectation that the
boys would prepare attractive and complete navigation cyphering books.
James Hodgson and the cyphering tradition. Early in 1709, soon after James
Hodgson had narrowly been elected RMS master, Hodgson made it clear that he was not
going to be bound by the unrealistic expectation that much of his teaching, and his students
learning, should be in the Latin language (Jones, 2015). But did he get his students to prepare
navigation cyphering books from the beginning of his RMS tenure? Clifford Jones (2015)
does not comment on Hodgsons teaching approaches other than to say that he had become
well-known for his popular lectures, using as much apparatus as he could for practical
illustration, including barometers, thermometers, microscopes and telescopes, and prisms for
work on coloured light (p. 156). Joness most pertinent comment on the cyphering question
was that a large handwritten manuscript held in the Caird Library at the National Maritime
Museum at Greenwich, and listed by the Museum as having been prepared in 1723 by John
Cox, an RMS student, may actually have been the work of a later pupil (p. 304). Jones
reasoning was that John Robertsons textbook The Elements of Navigation was first
published in 1754; also, there was a drawing of a castle in the Cox manuscript, and a drawing
book by Mr Lens (a drawing master at Christs Hospital), which was published in 1750,
included drawings of castles.
We have carefully examined Coxs (1723) manuscript and have no doubt that it was
prepared by Cox at Christs Hospital in 1723. Our conclusion is based on the fact that Cox
was an RMS student in 1723, and in that same year James Hodgsons (1723) momentous
two-volume A System of the Mathematics Containing the Euclidean Geometry, Plane and
Spherical Trigonometry, the Projection of the Sphere, both Orthographic and Stereographic,
Astronomy, the use of the Globes and Navigation, first appeared. In his preface, Hodgson
claimed that he had written the book especially for his RMS students, and comparisons of
pages in the book with entries in Coxs manuscript make it clear that the texts are the same.
Figure 5.1 shows a section of oblique sailing in Hodgsons book (on p. 200), and Figure
5.2 shows the page in Coxs manuscript with the corresponding section on oblique sailing.
The wording is almost identical. There are many other comparisons of the two texts which
could be made showing identical or almost identical passages. The only sensible conclusion
is that entries in Coxs manuscript were copied from a text provided by Hodgson. It is
possible he had actually copied from the recently-published first edition of Hodgson (1723),
or from a pre-publication version of that book.
Figure 5.1. Coasting along the shore ...: Case 2 for oblique sailing, in Hodgson (1723,
Vol. 1, p. 200).
Our analysis of John Coxs (1723) manuscript indicated that the text in Hodgsons
(1723) volumes became the basis for navigation cyphering books prepared by RMS students.
We also found evidence that during the period 17091723 RMS students prepared navigation
cyphering books based on Hodgsons (1706) earlier book on navigation.
In December 2015, the day after we visited the Caird Library at the National Maritime
Museum at Greenwichwhere we examined Coxs manuscriptwe went to the Bodleian
Libraries at the University of Oxford and located a 1718 navigation cyphering book prepared
by RMS student James Batterton. This makes it the oldest-known extant RMS cyphering
book. There is no mention of Battertons manuscript in Joness (2015) book. Case the 2nd
of the section on oblique sailing in Battertons (1718) manuscript is very similar tobut not
identical withthe excerpts shown in Figures 5.1 and 5.2.
Figure 5.2. Oblique sailing, Case the 2nd in John Coxs (1723) navigation cyphering book
(reproduced with kind permission from the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London).
Figures 5.3 and 5.4 show two pages from Battertons (1718) book. There can be little
doubt that James Batterton copied from texts provided by John Hodgson. The physical
appearance and the ordering of topics in Battertons and Coxs manuscripts are very
similarthe first page in each, for example, dealt with Vulgar Fractions.
Figure 5.3. A page from James Battertons (1718) cyphering book (Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford, MS. Rawlinson A. 308, fol. 52r, Right-Angled Sphericall Triangles).
Figure 5.4. Another page from James Battertons (1718) cyphering book (Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford, MS. Rawlinson A. 308, fol. 121r, Mercator Sailing).
Both manuscripts have full-leather bindings, and have royal crests on the front and
back covers. They have exactly the same page dimensions (37.6 cm x 22.9 cm), and pages in
the two manuscripts were presented in the same formatcompare, for example, the formats
in Figures 5.2 and 5.3. Battertons cyphering book is shown in Figure 5.5.
Our analyses of the Batterton and Cox manuscripts, and comparisons with Hodgsons
(1723) text, left us in no doubt that as early as 1718 Hodgsons RMS students were preparing
navigation cyphering books based on texts provided by James Hodgson; in the absence of
evidence to the contrary we assume that that was also true throughout the period 17091748.
Cyphering in the Royal Mathematical School in post-Hodgson eras. In 1748 John
Robertson became Hodgsons assistant within RMS, and between 1748 and 1755 cyphering
books could have been based on text provided by Robertson. Joness (2015) analysis
indicates that from 1755 onwards, until well into the nineteenth century, RMS boys prepared
navigation cyphering books based on texts in editions of John Robertsons The Elements of
Navigationthe first edition of which was published in 1754.
Figure 5.5 shows photographs of James Dobsons (1756) and Edmund Ensors (1852)
navigation cyphering books. Jones (2015, pp. 304315) provided some details for 53 of the
54 Christs Hospital navigation cyphering books known to exist. The 54th is that prepared by
James Batterton (1718), which we located in the Bodleian Libraries. Except for Battertons
(1718) and Coxs (1723) manuscripts, which are the earliest of the 54 extant manuscripts,
most surviving books carry the title Elements of Navigation, presumably because they were
based on John Robertsons famous text with almost the same title. Elements of Navigation
was printed in gilt on most of the spine covers of the extant books. Each was bound with full-
leather covers, with royal crests on the front and back covers. Each had more than 500 pages.
Figure 5.5. Navigation cyphering books by James Dobson (1756) (top left), Edmund Ensor
(1852) (top right), and James Batterton (1718) (below). Dobsons book is currently privately
owned. The image of Ensors book is reproduced with kind permission from the National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Battertons book is held in the Bodleian Libraries,
University of Oxford, MS. Rawlinson A. 308, ff. 152, sec. xviii.
Although RMS graduates were expected to take their books to sea it is probable that
Dobsons manuscript went straight into the Royal Library of George II. Like many RMS
cyphering books prepared after 1750, Dobsons (1756) book features full-leather covers,
each with a gilt in-laid, royal coat-of-arms on the outside. In fact, the manuscript was sold to
a private owner around 2006, but the previous owner believed that it was originally in the
Royal Library of King George II. If that was indeed the case, then the book was probably
placed in the Royal Library because it especially pleased the monarch during the Kings
annual inspection of RMS cyphering books.
Although the hand-drawn, and often water-colored, compass designs and navigation
charts in RMS cyphering books were impressive, after 1754 they were often merely copies
from any of the many editions of Robertsons textbook. The problems which students solved
were those listed in the textbook, and there can be no guarantee that many of the solutions to
the problems were not copied, alsoperhaps from earlier parent cyphering books. The
present authors (Ellerton and Clements) currently hold 3 of the 54 extant cyphering books
prepared by RMS boysthose by Charles Page, in 1826, Henry Joseph Calkin Andrew in
1836, and Richard Murdoch Robertson, in 1858.
Figure 5.6, which is from page 553 of Charles Pages (1826) book, shows the standard
of decoration, penmanship, calligraphy, and illustration to be found in each book. There are
very similar pages to that shown in Figure 5.6 in both Andrews (1836) and Robertsons
(1858) cyphering books. The dimensions of the pages in extant manuscripts prepared after
1754 were 27.9 cm x 22.9 cm, and the physical appearance of the covers also differed from
those of the Batterton (1718) and Cox (1723) manuscripts (see Figure 5.5). The writing and
formatting for each page in all of the manuscripts, however, were similar. The Batterton and
Cox manuscripts, each with about 300 pages, did not have as many pages as the RMS
manuscripts prepared later (which tended to have between 500 and 700 pages).
Navigation cyphering books prepared by RMS boys dealt with mathematics that went
well beyond the rule of three, and it would have been difficult for most boys to learn all of
their mathematics in just 18 months. The boys were expected to prepare beautiful cyphering
books which might be shown to the reigning monarch at the start of each year (see Figure
5.7). Probably each final page would have taken two to three hours to prepare, and preparing
even unacceptable drafts of these pages would also have been time-consuming.
Undoubtedly, the cyphering demandson both the boys and the RMS masterwere
challenging. The cyphering tradition controlled the implemented curriculum but, unlike the
situation in North America, where, until the second half of the nineteenth century, students
rarely had access to commercially-printed textbooks (Clements & Ellerton, 2015; Ellerton &
Clements, 2012), RMS students probably copied much of the material from commercially-
printed copies of texts by James Hodgson or John Robertson. RMS navigation cyphering
books included beautiful line drawings, often colored, and also notes on how to prepare logs
of voyages (Smith, 1985). The intention was that the boys would take the books to sea when
they became apprentices, and be able to refer to them whenever the situation seemed to be
related to something that they had studied at school.
It is likely that such was the reputation of RMS that other British schools imitated the
textbook-driven form of cyphering emanating from Christs Hospital. It is not surprising that
this was the form of the cyphering tradition which came to control school mathematics in
Great Britain (Clements & Ellerton, 2015; Denniss, 2012; Ellerton & Clements, 2014;
Walkingame, 1785; Wallis, 1963; Wardhaugh, 2012).
Figure 5.6. Given 1 declination, 1 altitude, 2 delineation, 2 altitude, time. Find the rest
(from Charles Pages (1826) cyphering book, p. 553).
Quality Assurance and the Received Curriculum 113
Figure 5.7. Queen Victoria inspecting RMS boys navigation cyphering books
(reproduced from The Illustrated London News, June 8, 1843, p. 19).
Quality Assurance and the Received Curriculum

One of the most remarkable aspects of the design of the RMS program was that, from
the beginning, a system of accountability was established which was intended to ensure the
quality of the learning of RMS graduatesand by inference, the quality of instruction
offered by RMS masters. Four components of this system were built into the design of the
program:
1. Between 1675 and 1695 the number of topics, and the content of those topics, were
defined in an agreed-upon syllabus (articles of instruction). This syllabus, which
emanated from Trinity House, constituted the intended curriculum for the period.
2. After 1677 an RMS student was not allowed to proceed to final, pre-apprenticeship,
assessment by Trinity House examiners unless the RMS master declared, in writing,
that that student was ready to be apprenticed.
3. On two occasions every year suitably qualified external examiners would visit the
school, assess each of the RMS boys through one-on-one interviews, and then
report to the Committee of Almoners on the state of learning of the boys, both
individually and as a group.
4. Once a boy was deemed to be ready for final, pre-apprenticeship assessment, he
was sent to Trinity House where he was examined on a one-on-one basis by an
expert. This expert would then prepare a report on what had been revealed during
the assessment, and forward that report to Christs Hospital.
The first of these four aspects has already been considered earlier in this chapter, but here we
comment briefly on the scheme as a whole.
Each of the four components was more concerned with making a correct decision on
whether an RMS boy was ready for apprenticeship than with determining what the boy
actually knew or did not know. In other words, the emphasis was more on making a crude
two-point measurement decision, ready to go to sea or not ready to go to sea, than on
determining what learning the boy had acquired. Of course, for each boy this two-point
decision needed to be made as accurately as possible, for it would have been wrong for RMS
to send out boys who did not know what they should have known. But the captains who took
on the boys as apprentices were rarely concerned with any details associated with what the
boys had learned. They believed that the boys would only learn how to be good seamen once
they were on board ship, and were actually doing the work of seamen.
The RMS Masters Declaration that a Student was Ready to be Apprenticed

In 1677 the General Court of Christs Hospital approved a statement that nothing but
remiss also in the master, or incapacity in the schollar, can prevent a youth arriving timely at
the degree of knowledge in Latine and Navigation required from him (see the notes under
Remedies to the first Defect of Execution, reproduced in Appendix A to this book).
Thus, it was assumed that all RMS students should, after having received regular attention
from their RMS master, be ready to go to sea, as apprentices, at the age of 16. In relation to
this, it should be noted that since the RMS master was expected to be involved in the
selection of boys who would graduate from the Writing and Grammar Schools to the Royal
Mathematical School (see the notes under Remedies to the second Defect of Execution,
reproduced in Appendix A to this book), the master should have no excuse if Trinity House
ruled that a boy was not ready to be apprenticed. Once the boys actually began studying
mathematics within RMS it was expected that they would master each of the 10 articles of
instruction within 18 months, and that they would be ready for apprenticeship before they
reached the age of 17. In most cases this upper-age limit was rigidly enforced by members of
the appropriate Christs Hospital committees.
Politics and the Assessment of Attained Knowledge

A boy was not supposed to be apprenticed until Trinity House had issued a statement
that he was ready for sea service. Towards that end, the learning of each RMS student whom
the master deemed to be ready to be apprenticed at sea was to be evaluated, on a one-on-one
basis, by a Trinity House examiner. It was assumed that the Trinity House examiner would
have expert knowledge in all areas of the RMS intended curriculum, and would be well
placed to judge the amount and types of knowledge that a boy had acquired.
But, although the conception and operation of this quality-assurance mechanism
seemed to be simple enough, it quickly became evident that it was difficult to apply fairly,
for the question whether a boy was ready to be apprenticed after having taken RMS classes
was one which could easily be politicized. Trinity House office bearers were known as
gentlemen of the Navy, and it was likely that not all examiners had the same levels of
knowledge of mathematics; they also had different expectations of the RMS boys; and some
of them knew ship captains who were keen to take on particular RMS boys as apprentices.
Furthermore, it was possible that Trinity House examiners did not like the RMS master and,
that could cloud their judgments about the readiness of boys to go to sea.
The dangers of politicizing the issue were raised as the fourth defect in execution in
Pepyss 1677 review of RMSs policies and practices. The defect was stated in the following
way (see Appendix A to this bookoriginal spelling and grammar are retained):
Defect: A too great forwardness is sometimes shewne to the passing out of
children before they are fully fitted (a) to the prejudice of the child; (b) discredit of
the Foundation; (c) a defeating of purposes of his Maty. To which may bee added
the sending of children too slightly to the Trinity House by a Beadle upon the
private applications of a master (for self interest) of the Treasurer, Mr Leeke or
other particular person, without the direction and notion of the Governors.
The following remedy, proposed in December 1677, was agreed to by the General Court of
Christs Hospital:
Remedy: To bee strictly enjoyned that noe child be sent to the Trinity House in
order to his being put forth to sea without a letter first directed from the President
and three or more of his Governors inclosing the usuall certificate from Mr Leeke
of the proficiency of the child, and that letter delivered by an officer of the
Hospitall at the Trinity House and a time assigned by the Master or Warden of that
corporation for the childs examination.
Thus, if it was decided that a boy should be sent to Trinity House for final assessment, then
the RMS masterMr Leeke, the first RMS master, was named in the above statements
was to sign a statement that that boy was ready for the examination, and a written request
signed by the President of Christs Hospital as well as three of its governors, was to be
formally delivered to Trinity House. There was no check on who Trinity House would
appoint as examinerthat was to be left to Trinity House itself to decide.
This important aspect of the original design of the RMS program raises fundamental
questions about student and curriculum evaluation which are still alive in the twenty-first
century. Did Trinity House have persons with sufficient mathematical, navigational, and
educational experience to be well-placed to evaluate the RMS students learning and
readiness for sea service? Even if the answer to that question was Yesand we believe
that probably that was not always the casethen issues associated with within-school
politics, and with politics between Christs Hospital and Trinity House, could still easily
arise.
Key to a proper scholarly discussion of the issues of received curriculum is the
assumption, evident in a 1677 statement made in the first Defect in the Executionby
Samuel Pepys and by other members of the General Court of Christs Hospitalthat most
RMS students should be able to be brought to an almost perfect knowledge and
understanding of all 10 topics which comprised the intended curriculum at that time, within a
period of 18 months. That statement was: Nothing but remissness in the master, or
incapacity in the schollar, can prevent a youths arriving timely at the degree of knowledge in
Latine and Navigation required from him (see Appendix A). Educational perspective would
suggest that this statement was almost certainly falseyet, those on the General Court in
1677 believed it to be true.
A succession of early RMS mastersspecifically Peter Perkins, Robert Wood, Edward
Paget and Samuel Newtonexperienced the professional pain of being told, after they had
stated in writing that students were ready to be apprenticed, that in fact their judgments had
been wrong. Often, too, the Trinity House examiners used combative, even insulting,
language when passing on their judgments. Consider, for example, the tone of following
statement sent by Trinity House to the Committee of Almoners in December 1708:
Five of the boys, John Walton, John Tanner, Isaac Jones, Stephen Burle, and
Joseph Emerson, are all returned unqualified and two of them very ignorant in all
of the ten articles of mathematical learning, and the other three not perfect in five
of the ten articles, soo they must be returned after they have been better instructed.
(Christs Hospital, minutes of the Committee of Almoners, December 8th, 1708)
Whereas members of Trinity House who were Governors of Christs Hospital were able to be
present at meetings of the Committee of Almoners to bolster the conclusions reached by their
examiners, the RMS master could only be present by special invitation. Thus, after the above
statement had been discussed by the Almoners, the minutes recorded that Captain Merry
was pleased to acquaint the Committee with the proceedings of the examiner at Trinity
House from day to day and how each boy performed, he being present all the time those boys
were under examination which was between two and three hours in nine severall days, and
after all the paines that has been taken in their examination found these boys more ignorant
in their business than any others that have of late come before the Brothers of Trinity House
(Christs Hospital, minutes of the Committee of Almoners, December 8th, 1708).
The concept of a written examination had not been developed at that time, and the final
examinations conducted by Trinity House were in the form of grueling one-on-one question-
and-answer sessions which, for a single student could extend for many hours, even over
several days. The RMS master in 1708, Samuel Newton, complained that the Trinity House
examinations were unfair because the examiners were not aware of the methods that he had
taught his RMS boys. He asked the Committee of Almoners to call in the five ignorant
boys to hear what they knew, but this request was refused by the Almoners. Samuel Newton
then resigned as RMS master.
Trinity House examiners often assumed that RMS boys being sent for examination
needed to be at a high level in all topics in the intended curriculumotherwise the candidate
would be failed. Thus, for example, minutes of the Committee of Almoners for December
17th, 1695, recorded that all seven boys who had been sent to Trinity House for examination
had been failed. The report included brief evaluative statements for all seven boysThomas
Normcot and Thomas Case, for example, were not perfect in either decimal or vulgar
arithmetick, nor in the use of the plaine and Mercators (sic.) charts, and besides, are
altogether unlearnd in the variation of the compass. The Trinity House report concluded:
And therefore we cannot report any of the said children to be soo fully instructed in the
Theory of the Arts of Arithmetick and Navigation, as that they are yet fit and capable to enter
into the practise, thereof, and to be bound forth apprenticed to Sea Service.
Concluding Comments on the Received Curriculum

It is appropriate to conclude this section on the received curriculum, and this chapter on
curriculum in general, with four questions which could not be readily answered in this book,
but could be the subject of further research. These questions have never been answered in
any of the histories of Christs Hospital.
1. Who were the expert examiners appointed by Trinity House? How up-to-date
were they with the mathematics specified in the RMS intended curriculum?
2. Was Samuel Newton correct when he claimed that his methods for solving certain
problems were better than those of the Trinity House examiners?
3. Did the Trinity House examiners take into account the proposition that the RMS
graduates would learn the everyday practices of seamen after they had begun their
apprenticeships, and that it was unreasonable to expect the boys whom they
examined to have perfect knowledge and understanding of the mathematics and
navigation concepts that they had studied during a very concentrated period of 18
months within RMS?
4. How could it be the case that external examiners brought in to examine RMS
boys at the school could judge them to be well taught, and that the master himself
would assert that boys were ready to be apprenticed, and yet Trinity House
examiners could rule that these earlier assessments were incorrect?
The same system of assessing the received curriculum that we have described in this Chapter
would remain in place throughout the period 16731798. We shall argue that although the
teaching brilliance of James Hodgson during the period between 1709 and (about) 1725, took
away much of the bitterness between RMS masters and Trinity House examiners which had
manifested itself during the early RMS years, key unresolved issues associated with the
assessment of received curriculum were always lurking in the background. Disputes could
flare up at any time, especially if there was ill-feeling between an RMS master and a Trinity
House examiner.
John Leeke, Robert Wood, and Samuel Newton were all extremely critical of the
Trinity House examiners. They correctly pointed out that the quality of their students
learning had been independently assessed as acceptable by externally-appointed, and expert
visitors to the school and wondered whether Trinity House examiners were sufficiently well
qualified to be in a position to negate such assessments (Great Britain, 1881). In August
1675, Trinity House decided that 15 poore boys of the New Royal Foundation of Christs
Hospital had upon examination ... been found fit to be put out to sea (Great Britain, 1881,
p. 256), and had referred to the extraordinary abilities and industry of Mr John Leeke,
present school master (p. 256); yet, within two years Trinity House would be extremely
critical of John Leekes work at Christs Hospital.
Thus, from the outset, very difficult issues associated with the assessment of the
implemented and received curricula arose. Samuel Pepys was happy to accept the judgments
of Trinity House examinersbut this was problematic, given his close connections with
Trinity House and his own lack of knowledge of mathematics. After all, the RMS masters
careers were put in jeopardy by Trinity House examiners negative assessments of the
learning of RMS students, and Pepys should not have had so much influence on the matter.
It was wrong to assume that the views and decisions of Trinity House examiners were
beyond reproach. After all, the 10 articles of instruction that Trinity House identified in 1675,
which remained in place for 20 years, were roundly criticized in May 1694from the point
of view of what should be included and what should not, and also what should be the most
appropriate way of sequencing what was includedby none other than Isaac Newton (see
Appendix B to this book). Almost certainly, Isaac Newton was not aware that he was,
effectively, criticizing an intended curriculum which had originated with Trinity House.
Pepyss criticisms in 1677 (see Appendix A) can be regarded as strong evidence that early
Trinity House decisions on RMS curricula may not always have been wise.
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Chapter 6
RMS Comes of Age 17091755: The Hodgson Era
Abstract: Early in 1709 James Hodgson was appointed master of RMS, and he remained in
that position until his death in 1755. The Hodgson era was a time when, against the odds,
Christs Hospital was able to provide a regular supply of graduates ready for gainful
apprenticeship and service in the Royal Navy or the merchant marine. This success was
especially evident in the early years of Hodgsons tenure as a result of his inspirational
teaching and strong knowledge of both mathematics and navigation. Somehow, too,
Hodgson, Fellow of the Royal Society, always managed to find time to be an able researcher,
and he was a regular contributor to the Royal Societys journal. In the early 1720s he
managed to write and have published a massive two-volume textbook, written especially for
RMS students, which took account of all aspects of the RMS program. Between 1748 and
1755 an ageing Hodgson was assisted in RMS work by John Robertson, and, in 1755
Robertson succeeded Hodgson as RMS master. This chapter will draw attention to the
serious lack of attention given to the Hodgson era by those who have written histories of
Christs Hospital. It is argued that this has led to a distortion of the history and significance
of the influence of RMS in the eighteenth century.
Keywords: Christs Hospital, History of school mathematics, Humfrey Ditton, Isaac

Newton, James Hodgson, John Flamsteed, John Robertson, Navigation education, Royal
Mathematical School, Royal Society, Trinity House, William Wales
RMS Facing its Future in 1709

When, early in 1709, Christs Hospital virtually dismissed Samuel Newton as master of
RMS, the future of RMS was looking bleak. Humfrey Ditton was now in charge of the New
Mathematical School (NMS) and, therefore, the question whether both RMS and NMS could
co-exist had to be considered. Samuel Pepys, RMSs greatest supporter, had died in 1703,
and with King Charles II and King James II long since gone, the fact that the RMS was a
Royal Foundation no longer carried as much weight as it once had. Because RMS had been
established by royal charter, there would have been legal difficulties if it had been proposed
that RMS be closed down altogether, but with NMS already operating, and supported by
Isaac Newton (Iliffe, 1997), the idea of RMS becoming part of a mathematics department
which incorporated both NMS and RMS might have solved that problem.
All attempts to make RMS a success seemed to have failed. It had not been possible to
define an appropriate intended curriculum, and it seemed to be impossible to find suitable
teachers. Moreover, the President of the Royal Society, Sir Isaac Newton, had strongly
supported the concept of NMS, which had a broader aim than merely educating for
navigational efficiency. If RMS were to have a good chance of being successful, so that
arguments for its continued existence would be sustainable, then the next appointment of an
RMS master was a vitally important one.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_6
122 6. RMS Comes of Age 17091755: The Hodgson Era
The two best qualified applicants for the RMS position in 1709 were James Hodgson
(16721755) and William Jones (16751749). Jones was a Welshman who is best known for
having introduced the symbol (the Greek letter pi) to represent the ratio of the
circumference of a circle to its diameter (Bellhouse, 2014; Rothman, 2009). Between 1695
and 1702 Jones had worked as a mathematics teacher on ships, and in 1702 his A New
Compendium of the Whole Art of Navigation was published. After he gave up teaching on
ships he had joined the mathematics coffee-house circuit in London. In 1706 his Synopsis
Palmariorum Matheseos, a work which included theorems on differential calculus and
infinite series, appeared. Early in 1709, when he applied to be considered for the position of
RMS master, his curriculum vitae offered a healthy combination of mathematics, teaching
and navigationwhich seemed to cover everything needed to have a chance of being a
successful master at Christs Hospital. Furthermore, two of his referees were Isaac Newton
and Edmond Halley. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1711 (Bellhouse, 2010,
2014) and, later, he would become Vice-President of that Society (Rothman, 2009).
But James Hodgson was preferred to Jones, by 41 votes to 39.
James Hodgson Clears the Deck

Hodgson did not have university training in mathematics, but was known to be a fine
pure and applied mathematician who had served a tough apprenticeship under John
Flamsteed at the Royal Observatory. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and had recently
authored impressive books on The Theory of Navigation and The Laws of Stereographick
Projectionpublished in 1706 and 1708, respectively. Most important of all, though,
Hodgson was known to have an outstanding knowledge of mathematical and navigational
equipment, and had a reputation as the most entertaining lecturer on a London coffee-house
circuit in which crowds flocked to hear about, and watch, demonstrations of how
mathematical and scientific principles could be applied (Iliffe, 1997; Stewart, 1999). One
might have been excused for thinking that if there was anyone who could lift RMS, at this its
time of greatest need, then that person was James Hodgson (Willmoth, 1997).
Entries in the minutes of Christs Hospital Committee of Almoners for the early months
of 1709 reveal that Hodgson expected the school to provide him with appropriate equipment.
On January 9 the Committee ordered that Mr Rowley, a well-known instrument maker, shall
look over the ... library in the company of Mr Hodgson the master and lay by such as he
judged are worth the cleaning and fitting up, and then take them home and mend them.
Also, Mr Rowley was ordered to make and provide what other instruments the master
judges is wanting and necessary to be provided for the use of the boys in his school.
Then, on January 28, 1709, the minutes recorded that Sir Isaac Newton and Dr Harris
proposed it to the Committee as their opinion that it would very necessary for the master of
the Royal Mathematical Foundation to instruct the boys by some Latin authors now extant,
viz: Arithmetica Numerosa & Speciosa, Barrows Geometry, and Oughtreds Trigonometry.
At the same meeting Dr Harris and Captain Merry, who had combined to bring down Samuel
Newton, were asked by the Committee to look over the instruments now lying in the library,
and to order the reparation of such as they think are worth it, and to dispose of the rest to the
best advantage. The messages to Mr Hodgson could not have been clearerwe want the
RMS boys to be able to read mathematics texts in Latin, and we want them to be engaged
regularly in hands-on activities with relevant instruments.
James Hodgson Clears the Deck 123
The minutes of the Committee of Almoners for February 11th, 1709, reported that the
five boys who had been declared by Samuel Newton as fit to go to the sea but had been
judged by the Brothers of Trinity House, on November 30th, 1708, to be unqualified to do
so, were now ready to be re-examined, and added that Mr Hodgson hoped they would be able
to pass the re-examination. It will be recalled that two of those five boys had been described
by Trinity House examiners as very ignorant in the ten articles of mathematical learning,
and the other three perfect in five of the ten articles. The minutes for February 25, 1709
reported that Trinity House now had agreed to pass three of the five boys, but the other two
still needed further instruction before they could be passed. Given the circumstances, it
seemed that Hodgson had earned his stripes with Trinity House, and that, after the Samuel
Newton affair, Trinity House examiners had found a way of saving face.
At a meeting of the Committee of Almoners on February 25, 1709, Hodgson made a
brave move that would greatly offend the Grammar (that is to say the Classics) School.
The new RMS master informed the Committee that whereas they were pleased to order,
lately, that his boys should be instructed by Barrows Latin Euclid, he finds the upper boys
are so very deficient in Latin, as that they are not capable of construing any author, nor
reading Barrows Latin Euclid. This was not the first time it had been alleged that Latin was
not being well learned in the Grammar School (Flecker, 1939), and the Committee
immediately sent for Mr Mountfort and Mr Cobb, the two Grammar School masters, to
inquire into the reason why the boys are so ignorant in the Latin tongue.
Mr Mountfort dutifully came before the meeting of the Committee of Almoners and
said that the RMS boys of whom Mr Hodgson had spoken had probably forgotten what they
had been taught. When Mr Mountfort was asked whether the Junior Grammar School master,
Mr Cobb, was diligent with his work in the school, and attended it as he ought to do (the
Committee having some reason to suspect that it was through Mr Cobbs neglect that the
boys were not better qualified), Mr Mountfort desired to be excused. He added, before his
departure, that he hoped that the Governors would visit the school and make their own
observations. Since Mr Cobb had not been present when asked to come, it was ordered that
he should attend the next Committee meeting to answer some complaints made against him
for neglect of his business. Mr Cobb subsequently appeared before the Almoners at their
meeting of March 11th, 1709, and was charged with intemperate, wonton living and being
absent from his school at such hours as he is obliged to be present. Mr Cobb pleaded guilty,
and asked for forgiveness. The Committee decided to give him another chance.
This episode would have been highly embarrassing for the Grammar School, and
probably represents the low point in the history of that School. The histories of Christs
Hospital by Trollope (1834) and Pearce (1901), written by persons with strong attachments
to the Grammar School, tended to glorify that Schooland to lessen the importance of the
position and role of Royal Mathematical School in the history of Christs Hospital. It was
incidents like the one just described that heightened tensions between RMS and the Grammar
School. Although this episode represented an initial within-school political victory for Mr
Hodgson, and provided him with space to manoeuvre so far as the RMS/Latin-language issue
was concerned, it would have embarrassed the Grammar Schooland that was a dangerous
thing for Hodgson to have done so early in his time at Christs Hospital. One important result
of the episode was that Hodgson was more or less freed of the obligation to get his RMS
students competent in a Latin-language version of the RMS curriculum. He could concentrate
on preparing his students in Englishand that is precisely what he did during the remainder
of long tenure as RMS master.
During his first three months as RMS master there can be no doubt that Hodgson did
much to clear the air and clean the RMS decks: he obtained acceptable equipment that would
enable him to engage his students actively in their learning; he made Christs Hospital
officials aware that requiring students to learn mathematics and navigation in the Latin
language would be problematical; he dealt adequately with the failing students he had
inherited from the Samuel Newton era; he created positive relationships with Isaac Newton,
with the Committee of Almoners, and with Trinity House. But, even then he was not fully
ready to move ahead on his own terms.
Two matters would have concerned him. First, the very existence of RMS as a totally
independent entity was threatened by the parallel existence of Humfrey Dittons New
Mathematical School. It must have seemed untenable to have a Royal Mathematical
School and a New Mathematical School co-existing in the same institution. And, second,
there was no textbook specifically available for RMS, given that Jonas Moores (1681) A
New Systeme of the Mathematicks was too expensive to be made freely available to RMS
students. Any problems arising from the co-existence of Dittons New Mathematical School
would soon be solved when Ditton died in 1715 and NMS was dissolved. So far as the need
for a suitable textbook was concerned, Hodgson began writing an authoritative text aimed
specifically at his RMS boys.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners for November 7th, 1712, recorded that the
Committee expected that the two most senior boys in the Grammar School should be
permitted to study mathematicsone in RMS and the other in NMSin preparation for
future university studies. This problem of preparing non-RMS boys for university
mathematical studies would become more acute during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, with Oxford and Cambridge Universities requiring more and more mathematical
knowledge of prospective students. This meant that decisions had to be made about how
RMS would teach the Grammar School boys needing to study mathematics (see discussion of
this issue in minutes of the Committee of Almoners, October 23th, 1724). Decisions also had
to be made on which Grammar School boys would be allowed to become RMS boys.
Minutes of the Committee of Almoners for March 27th, 1713, provided the following
details about the scope of the Grammar School, and the rules which were to be taken as the
standing rules and orders to be observed by the Grammar School master:
That one boy and no more be sent each year to the university;
That ten boys and no more be at the same time instructed and fitted for the
university;
Which ten boys be distributed into three classes, two whereof to be in the
uppermost and four in each of the other two classes;
That the fourth class always consist of forty boys to supply the Royal
Mathematical School and the number designed for the university;
That fifty and no more be under Mr Mountfort;
That for the supply of Mr Mountforts School there be placed under Mr Cobb
sixty boys to be distributed in three classes, twenty boys in each class;
That no boy taken into Mr Mountforts but who has been in Mr Cobbs School;
That no boy above the age of nine be taken into Mr Cobbs School;
Demise of the New Mathematical School 125
That at the end of six months Mr Cobb be obliged to give an account whether
the boys put under him are fit to be continued or rejected;
That at the end of one month after a boy is removed under Mr Mountfort he be
obliged to give the Committee account of each boys capacity.
Although these rules made clear the ist purpose of the Grammar School, they were not
clearly enough defined to avoid tensions between RMS and the Grammar School. Did the
Grammar School have the right to make decisions about which Grammar School boys should
become RMS boys? Should the Grammar School have the right to keep its 10 best students
for higher classical studies designed to prepare them for entry to Cambridge or Oxford
University? During Hodgsons period of tenure, boys from the Grammar School were
regularly placed in RMS (see, for example, minutes of the Committee of Almoners,
December 12th, 1718, and June 17th, 1720), but the minutes never made clear whether the
Grammar School had the right to insist that its best boys remain in the Grammar School.
From the time RMS began graduating students there had always been some doubt over
whether boys should be apprenticed only to the Royal Navy, or whether it was permissible
for them to be apprenticed to captains in the merchant marine. That issue was clarified in
November 1712minutes of the Committee of Almoners for November 14th, 1712,
recorded that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty ... have no objections to your
binding the boys of the said Foundation apprentices to commanders of merchant ships, and
you are allowed to do so by the said Patents.
The Demise of the New Mathematical School
Throughout the period from 1709 to 1711 the names of Grammar School students and
Writing School students were put forward to the Committee of Almoners for consideration
for entry to RMS. The normal procedure was for Mr Hodgson to present the names of
students who had indicated that they were willing to become Kings boys, and the
Committee would then call in and talk briefly to each of the students named. Then, the
Committee would decide which of the students would be given a Kings badge. Always, the
aim was to make the total number of Kings boys exactly 40of whom about 10 would be in
the upper or first class and the others in three lower classes (see minutes of the Committee
of Almoners, April 10th, 1712). The boys in the upper class spent almost all of the school
day actually studying mathematics and navigation in the special RMS rooms.
But, names of boys wishing to enter Mr Dittons New Mathematical School did not
appear at regular intervals in the minutes of the Committee of Almoners. The fact that NMS
was struggling to attract students was made clear at the meeting of the Committee of
Almoners on May 4th, 1711, when it was revealed that a school nurse had been discouraging
students from entering NMS, and had claimed that the only students who did enter that
School had been bribed to do so by Mr Ditton.
That NMS found it difficult to attract students is not surprising considering Mr Ditton
was in direct competition with Mr Hodgson, and Hodgson had a reputation for involving
students actively in the learning process through the use of modern mathematical and
navigational instruments. Mr Ditton had aligned himself with the Grammar School when he
had asked Mr Cobb to help him translate an advanced algebra textbook (Alexandri, 1693)
from Latin into English (for the use of NMS boys)see minutes of the Committee of
Almoners, May 13th, 1709. It seemed that Mr Ditton and Mr Hodgson were not cooperating
with each other, despite the fact that they were the schools experts in mathematics.
Another reason why Mr Ditton found it hard to attract students to NMS was that the
NMS curriculum was extraordinarily abstract. This is illustrated by pages, written by Ditton
himself, and published as part of an appendix to A Synopsis of Algebra (Alexander, 1709;
Ditton, 1709). Ditton persuaded Christs Hospital to fund the translation and publication of
that book so it could be used in the two mathematical schools in Christs Hospital (p. i).
Alexanders [or Alexandris] book was originally in Latin, but Ditton had worked with
Samuel Cobb, junior master in the Grammar School, in having it translated into English.
Ditton (1709) stated that he had written the appendix (which occupied 128 pages) to the
1709 Christs Hospital edition of Alexanders book with the intention of making the book
still more useful to young beginners (p. ii). Isaac Newton had approved the publication of
the book, and Newtons former Trinity College protg, Edward Paget, formerly
mathematical master at Christs Hospital and someone whom Ditton described as an
excellent and everyway learned mathematician (p. 105), had contributed 23 pages within
the appendix to the construction of solid problems (p. 105).
It might be thought difficult to judge whether material intended for NMS students
around 1710 was of suitable difficulty for those students, but in this case our experiences in
teaching mathematical learners of all ages has left us in no doubt that Ditton and his
supporters, Isaac Newton and Edward Paget, seriously over-estimated what NMS students
would be capable of learning so far as algebra was concerned. Figure 6.1 shows page 10 of
Dittons (1709) appendixthe algebra is concerned with whether surd quantities are
commensurable or incommensurable. Given that NMS students would have been aged
from 14 to 16 years, the level of abstraction would have been unattainable for most of them.
Figure 6.2 is from page 107 of Dittons (1709) appendixthis page was prepared by
Edward Paget, but was based on material in a geometry textbook by Descartes. The topic was
A general way of constructing all solid problems reducd to an equation of three or four
dimensions (p. 106). Once again the level of abstraction, and the remoteness of the topic
under consideration, would have meant that almost all the NMS boys would have had little
chance of understanding the text.
The creation of the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital in 1673 represented
a step into the unknown so far as mathematics education was concerned. Leaving aside any
consideration of small private establishments, no other regular schoolanywhere in the
worldhad offered young boys, many of them literally brought into the school off the
street, such a comprehensive program in mathematics beyond arithmetic. It was
unsurprising that Christs Hospital officials liked to consult Isaac Newton on curricular
matters, for Newton was the nations mathematical giant; it was also understandable that
Newton should have supported the appointment of Edward Paget, whom he regarded as a
fine mathematician, as RMS master; it was also unsurprising, that Newton would have
supported the appointment of Ditton as NMS master, for he regarded Ditton as a worthwhile
mathematician. But, events would provide an important lesson for future generations
specifically, that experts in higher mathematics are not necessarily well placed to make
judgments about school mathematics. Such experts tend to assume that, given time and
expert teaching, most schoolchildren are capable of learning even difficult mathematics.
Enrolments in NMS did not improve after the incident with the nurse. Ditton died in
October 1715 and the Committee of Almoners immediately decided that the concept of a
New Mathematical School at Christs Hospital should be abandoned, and that any existing
NMS boys should be transferred to RMS.
Demise of the New Mathematical School 127
Figure 6.1. Page 10 from Dittons (1709) appendix.

Figure 6.2. Page 109 from Dittons (1709) appendix. This page was actually prepared
by Edward Paget, a former RMS master.
James Hodgson Clears the Deck 129
How Successful was James Hodgson as RMS Master?

In his early years at Christs Hospital, Hodgson played the game of securing
enrolments for RMS in a tough but fair manner, and by the end of 1715 his position in the
School was solidly established and not obviously subject to challenge. He was still a
youngish managed 37and someone who was at the peak of his considerable teaching
powers. He was well established in the school, and almost allbut not allof the students
he put forward to Trinity House for examination were returned as having passed (for an
exception, see minutes of the Committee of Almoners, November 3rd, 1726). But, lurking
within school politics was resentment from the Grammar School, which Hodgson had
shamed soon after his arrival in 1709. Mr Mountforts position as master of the Grammar
School would end in 1719 (minutes of the Committee of Almoners, June 23rd, 1719),
because his age and infirmity had long rendered him incapable of discharging his trust
(quoted in Pearce, 1901, p. 277). Mountfort had never completely recovered from the
professional embarrassment heaped upon him and his Grammar School when, in February
1709, Mr Hodgson had informed the Committee of Almoners that the students he received
from the Grammar School hardly knew any Latin.
James Hodgson may have been an outstanding teacher, but the mathematical and
navigational topics that he was dealing with were still very difficult for some of his students.
From time to time RMS students misbehaved within the school grounds (see, e.g., minutes of
the Committee of Almoners, April 12th, 1728), and some RMS boys expressed their
frustrations by running away (see, for example, names of RMS boys who ran away recorded
in the minutes of the Committee of Almoners, June 16th, 1710, July 6th, 1711; June 23rd,
1719; March 24th, 1743). In fact, though, many students in the different schools of Christs
Hospital ran away, and probably that phenomenon was no more common in RMS than in
other schools (Gardy, 2011). Nevertheless, the fact that some RMS boys supposedly under
Hodgsons wing were prepared to risk all that Christs Hospital provided for them by running
away is a reminder that the RMS boys had, daily, to face a daunting implemented
curriculum. Every school day promised to heap academic miseryupon them.
In their histories of Christs Hospital, Trollope (1834) and Pearce (1901) claimed that
RMS boys often bullied younger Christs Hospital students. Although neither Trollope nor
Pearce stated that this bullying was particularly prevalent during the time that Hodgson was
RMS master, some RMS students were guilty of bullying during the Hodgson era (see, e.g.,
minutes of the Committee of Almoners, April 12th, 1728). Trollope argued that such
bullying was particularly serious because some RMS boys were much older than 16which,
according to the original articles of the Royal Foundation, was not supposed to happen.
However, an analysis that we carried out of the ages of RMS students during the Hodgson
era did not support the claim that under Hodgson many RMS students remained at Christs
Hospital well beyond the age of 16 (see, for example, ages of RMS students reported in the
minutes of the Committee of Almoners, November 2nd, 1711).
William Trollope (1834) barely mentioned James Hodgson in his history of Christs
Hospital and, amazingly, Ernest H. Pearce (1901) did not mention Hodgson at all. Both
apparently lumped Hodgson with earlier RMS mastersall of whom they regarded as having
been unsuccessful. Trollope (1834) had only this to say about the influence of Hodgson on
RMS and on the whole school:
Mr Hodgson held the situation [that is to say, the status of master] for nearly fifty
years; during which time the boys, or rather the young men, who were sent up to
the Trinity House, had, for the most part, nearly attained their majority. This
system was pursued under the immediate successors of Mr Hodgson; but though it
may be supposed that the course of education would thus be rendered more
complete the ill effects with which it was attended were disastrous in the extreme.
When Mr William Wales was elected to the mastership in 1775, he found the
school in the most desperate state of anarchy and confusion; the boys were a terror
to the whole community; and it required the most determined perseverance of that
able mathematician and strict disciplinarian [i.e., William Wales] to establish his
authority over his new pupils. ... The vices and immoralities, which had taken deep
root in this branch of the establishment, were speedily eradicated; the duties of the
school were rigidly enforced; and sixteen was the age, beyond which he seldom
allowed a boys continuance in the school. (p. 94)
The only RMS master whom Trollope and Pearce seem to regard as having been successful
was William Walesmore will be heard of Waless work as RMS master in the next
chapter. Both Trollope and Pearce had attended Christs Hospital in their own school days,
and their higher studies had been in the Grammar School. Both wrote their school histories
from the perspective of the Grammar School, and since Wales was the father-in-law of Dr A.
W. Trollope, Upper Grammar School master, and the grandfather of William Trollope, who
wrote the history of Christs Hospital, it is not surprising that his work as head of RMS was
positively reviewed in William Trollopes (1834) book.
We believe that Trollopes and Pearces treatment, or non-treatment, of James Hodgson
and of the Hodgson years at Christs Hospital distorted the history of Christs Hospital and,
in particular, the history of RMS. More will be said in relation to this point of view later in
this present work.
Hodgsons (1723) A System of the Mathematics

One of the major needs of RMS when James Hodgson took up his position at Christs
Hospital in 1709 was a decent textbook that specifically dealt with the major themes of the
RMS curriculum. Although, from the outset, Hodgson worked diligently at doing something
about solving that problem, the task was large, and it was not until 1723 that his massive
two-volume A System of the Mathematics Containing the Euclidean Geometry, Plane and
Spherical Trigonometry, the Projection of the Sphere, both Orthographic and Stereographic,
Astronomy, the Use of the Globes and Navigation appeared. Volume 1 had 697 pages, and
Volume 2 had 442 pages, with an additional 160 pages being devoted to mainly logarithmic
and trigonometrical tables of values. Taylor (1966) described Hodgsons (1723) volumes as
formidable and commented that they were evidence of the very thorough grounding that
Hodgson gave to his RMS students (p. 14).
Although these volumes were not published by Christs Hospital itself, according to a
statement on the title page they were specifically designed for the use of the Mathematical
School founded by King Charles II. The volumes included tables of various kindssolar
tables, meridional parts for every degree and minute of latitude, logarithms, sines, cosines,
tangents and secants (both natural and artificial).
Preliminary pages to the book dedicated it to his most sacred Majesty, George, King
of Great Britain, France and Ireland. Hodgson opened his Preface by asserting that when he
took up the position of master at RMS the methods at that time in use did not appear to me to
be rational and instructive (p. i). For the time being he got his RMS students to use his
Hodgsons (1723) A System of the Mathematics 131
Theory of Navigation Demonstrated, which had been published in 1706, but from the outset
he recognized that a much more comprehensive text, which encompassed all of the intended
RMS curriculum content, was needed. He felt that his two 1723 volumes achieved that end
he concluded his Preface with the words: As to the work in general, I cant recollect that
there is one thing left undemonstrated that is capable of it (p. viii).
The present writers own a first-edition copy of Volume 1 of Hodgsons 1723 book.
Very few copies of the second volume are extant, but Google books show original pages
which can be downloaded. Our copy of Volume 1 is in its beautiful original full-leather
binding, and it looks extraordinarily impressive. But, what of its content? How well did the
book fit the requirements of the RMS curriculum and of Trinity House examiners?
The High Level of Difficulty in Hodgsons (1723) Text

Given that Hodgson clearly stated in the Preface to the first volume of his 1723 treatise
that what he had written represented a one-to-one mapping of what he expected his RMS
students to learn, a careful analysis of the text should provide a strong indication of the
intended RMS curriculum in the 1720s, and probably of the intended curriculum until at least
1748when John Robertson was appointed assistant RMS master. With that thought in mind,
we examined the mathematics presented in the chapters, and were struck by the high level of
difficulty. We shall not analyze the contents of each section or each chapterbut it will be
useful to consider a few sections in order to establish the main point being made.
Hodgson (1723) on Geometry. We start by analyzing the first chapteror as Hodgson
called it, Part I of the bookwhich was concerned with Geometry. In his summary of
this chapter, Hodgson stated that it contained the principal and most useful propositions of
the first six books of Euclids Elements, demonstrated after the Euclidean manner (p. i). It
was somewhat surprising that Books 11 and 12 of the Elements, which deal with elementary
aspects of three-dimensional geometry, were not considered in this Part, for navigation is
concerned with three-dimensional contexts.
Hodgsons treatment of Geometry was very formal and very Euclidean. Definitions
postulates, and axioms were stated, and theorems were proved. Succinct diagrams were
shown to illustrate what was being considered. Although Hodgsons section on Geometry did
not include all of the material to be found in the first six books of Euclid, those sections he
did include were dealt with in the same way as Euclid himself had dealt with the Geometry
under consideration. There was no mention of degrees as units for angle measurement, for
Euclid measured angles in terms of the number of right angles, or parts of right angles.
Except in his summary of the fifth book of Euclids Elements, which was concerned with
proportional relationships, there was no use of algebra. Algebra was never used to represent
side lengths or angle magnitudes in the sections on geometry in Hodgsons treatise.
Figure 6.3, which is reproduced from Hodgson (1723, Volume 1, p. 19), relates to what
is commonly known as Pythagorass Theorem. There are many legitimate proofs of this
theorem, and the one shown in Figure 6.3 is certainly not the easiest. But the proof shown is
an English version of the proof originally presented by Euclid 2000 years earlier.
Figure 6.3. Pythagorass Theorem as shown in Hodgson (1723), Volume 1, page 19.
It could be argued that Hodgsons virtual reproductions of Euclids proofs was a good
thing, because they permitted easy discussion among RMS students of the importance of
Euclid and of his geometrical and logical masterpiece, the Elements. But, there was a danger
of over-emphasizing the pure mathematical side of things and of not drawing sufficient
attention to applications. Thus, for example, Pythagoras Theorem and its proof were
presented strictly as a piece of pure mathematics. There was no immediate discussion of real-
life contexts in which the meaning of the theorem could be brought to life through
applications. There was no mention of such things as right triangles whose side lengths were
in the ratio 3:4:5, and no mention of any algebraic equivalent of Pythagoras Theorem (such
as a2 + b2= c2, for an appropriately labelled right triangle ABC).
The first 54 pages of the first volume of Hodgsons book dealt with Euclidean theorem
after Euclidean theorem, each with its formal proof. Each was presented in a wordy, but
highly logical form of written text accompanied by a diagram. Thus, for example, Figure 6.4
(from Hodgson, 1723, Volume 1, p. 27) shows how Euclid stated and proved what is
regarded as a fundamental circle theorem: In Circle DABC, the Angle DBC at the Centre
is double the Angle BAC at the Circumference; when the same Arch of the Circle BC is the
Base of the Angles.
Figure 6.4. Hodgsons (1723) treatment of an important circle theorem (p. 27).
The three uppermost diagrams in Figure 6.4 show the three cases which need to be
considered to complete a general proof of the theorem, and the fourth diagram relates to an
important deduction from it. The theorem is one of the most interesting Euclidean theorems
for school students, because its truth is not what might be expected intuitively, and
deductions from it (angles in the same segment of a circle are equal and the angle in a
semi-circle is a right angle) are important theorems that can be immediately deduced from
the fundamental theorem. Somehow, however, the information as Hodgson (1723) presented
it in Figure 6.4, failed to capture the elegance and surprise of the associated geometrical
theorems involved, and there was no hint of how the results might be applied in real-life
situations.
RMS students were preparing to become apprentice seamen, and those who designed
the RMS program obviously regarded the mathematical component as extremely important.
For RMS students the study of Euclidean geometry ought to have assisted them to think
logically and to analyze situations geometrically and spatiallyso that, upon graduation,
they would become apprentice seamen with the ability to apply mathematics in relevant
situations. From that perspective, Hodgsons (1723) treatment of Euclidean geometry was
overly formal. That said, there can be no doubt that Hodgsons treatment of geometry made
clear that in his book there would be no compromises from a mathematical point of view.
Hodgson was equally uncompromising in his belief that students should understand the
mathematics they were being asked to learn, and that they should not merely learn rules by
rote. He maintained that rote learning of rules had been so universally practised that the
poison had infected the whole race of English sailors (quoted in Taylor, 1966, p. 130).
Hodgson (1723) on Trigonometry. Hodgson began his 80-page section on
Trigonometry in the manner shown in Figure 6.5 (from page 55). He made use of what had
become a standard diagram for introducing trigonometric concepts of sine, tangent and
secantthus the length SR represented the sine of the arch SAP, the length AT represented
the tangent of the arch, and the length CT represented the secant of the arch. Then followed
an exposition of those formal trigonometrical concepts which were needed by persons faced
with the task of finding lengths of sides, and magnitudes of angles, of triangles.
Figure 6.5. Hodgsons (1723) introduction to sines, tangents and secants (p. 55).
Rather than merely giving tables of sines, tangents and secants for different angles,
Hodgson described how such tables could be created. In doing so, he adopted the notation of
Isaac Newtons fluxions, and made use of infinite series. The mathematics quickly became
difficult and must have been extremely difficult for almost any 14- to 16-year old student.
Figure 6.6 shows page 69 of Volume 1, which was intended to allow students to calculate the
sine of one minute (i.e., of an angle which was one-sixtieth of a degree) to 10 decimal places.
During this introduction to trigonometry, Hodgson (1723) introduced the concept, and use, of
logarithms (see Volume 1, p. 101), and he quickly began to show how logarithms could be
used when calculating side lengths and angle magnitudes for triangles for which not all sides
or angles were given. Not only did Hodgson provide tables of logarithms, but he also gave a
43-page appendix, at the back of the book, on the nature and construction of logarithms.
Figure 6.6. Finding the sine of any arch, its length being given (from Hodgson, 1723,
Volume 1, p. 69).
Hodgson (1723) on navigation and astronomy. Part III of the book comprised 552
pages, divided into 25 sections. All the major types of sailingplain, traverse, parallel,
Mercators, meridional parts, great-circlewere defined and dealt with from a mathematical
perspective. Then came careful consideration of latitude, longitude, solar tables, orthographic
and stereographic projections, use of globes, and chronology. Each section was well
illustrated, occasionally with diagrams on fold-out pages.
Hodgsons (1723) tribute to John Flamsteed. In Volume 2, Hodgson could not resist
acknowledging his late mentor, John Flamsteed. There were sections on An account of the
astronomical works of the late Reverend Mr Flamsteed, the Kings Astronomer, and
calculation deduced from Flamsteedian observations (Volume 2, p. 515).
Absence of Exercises in the First Volume of Hodgson (1723)

One of the most interesting aspects of Hodgsons (1723) text was that although model
problems were stated, and solved, no subsequent exercises were posed in Volume 1. But
Volume 2 did have exercises, with answers being given immediately after the statements of
problems. Hodgson had probably decided that he would set exercises for the students
himselfbut one wonders whether other teachers using Hodgsons (1723) book would have
been sufficiently capable and confident to do that.
Popularity of the RMS Program in the Early 1720s
In the early 1720s there were always far more boys wishing to enter the RMS program
than there were places available (see minutes of the Committee of Almoners, June 17th and
June 22nd, 1720; December 18th, 1721; July 25th, 1723; November 29th, 1725). Despite the
difficult curriculum, boys wished to join the program, and almost certainly its popularity
arose from a perception that Hodgson was an engaging, masterly teacher. Expert external
examiners, such as Thomas Weston, of the Royal Hospital School, assessed the boys
learning and, with the occasional exception (see, for example, minutes of the Committee of
Almoners, November 3rd, 1726), reported in very positive terms on what they found.
When, at the beginning of 1709, Hodgson began his tenure as master of RMS, the
future existence of the School was under threat. At that time, Humfrey Ditton had established
the New Mathematical School, with Isaac Newtons support, and if Hodgsons early efforts
had been unsatisfactory it was likely that Ditton would become the head of a redefined RMS.
People like Samuel Pepys and Jonas Moore were no longer there to defend the original
conception of RMS, and even the royal connection could easily have been compromised,
given that the memories of King Charles II and King James II were not venerated by those in
high society. But, Hodgsons early successes, and Dittons failures and death, had placed
Hodgson, and the RMS in a strong position.
Other Programs Based on the RMS Model for Navigation Education

From the time he took up his appointment at Christs Hospital, James Hodgson engaged
in internal political skirmishes between the Grammar School and the RMS. The Grammar
School had a much longer history than RMS in Christs Hospital, and it was a bitter pill for it
to have to accept the idea that RMS should be able to secure its best students. Furthermore,
James Hodgson had severely embarrassed the Grammar School when, soon after his arrival
at Christs Hospital, he told the Committee of Almoners that the students he received from
the Grammar School did not know the Latin language very well. However, the skirmishes
with the Grammar School were only part of a wider range of educational politics in which
Hodgson had to engage. There were many senior naval personnel, outside of Christs
Hospital, and especially within the Admiralty, who would not accept the idea that the
bookish type of learning provided at RMS was likely to provide a satisfactory training for
prospective naval offices and ship captains.
Other Programs Based on the RMS Model 137
At the heart of the external politics was the fact that most RMS students were not
children of gentlemen and, therefore, from the Admiraltys perspective, they lacked the
breeding that was traditionally associated with young officers (Dickinson, 2007; Tanner,
1926). Furthermore, there were many in the Admiralty who believed that the proper
training of future captains and naval administrators was best achieved through an immersion
process based on actual experiences on quarterdecks. Prospective officers needed to learn to
cope with the wet and the cold, with the mass of humanity on a crowded ship, and with the
threats of enemy war ships or pirates or privateers; they needed to learn how to climb the
loft, to be prepared to accept unflinchingly harsh punishment for their own misdemeanors
and, where appropriate, to be willing to administer such punishment to others whom they
were supervising; and they needed to behave in ways which not only fitted their present
status but also their likely future status. For many senior members of the Admiralty, all of
those reality checks were more important qualities for a naval officer-in-training than
participation in a program based on book knowledge of mathematics and of the principles of
navigation (Davies, 2008).
In the 1720s the Admiralty decided to establish a high quality on-shore training
institution that offered boys from suitable families a three-year program which combined
book-instruction in mathematics and navigation with practical, sea-based exercises. The
Royal Naval Academy (RNA) was opened by the Admiralty in Portsmouth in 1733 to
provide the children of gentlemen with a blend of hands-on practical training and book
learning that, the Admiralty hoped, would produce graduates likely to become superior
officers within the Navy and the merchant marine. According to Dickinson (2007), a
convenient house was to be built inside the dockyard at Portsmouth, for the boarding and
teaching of 40 children, who were to be the sons of noblemen and gentlemen and were to be
aged between 13 and 16 years on admission (p. 34). Significantly, the head of the school was
to be the mathematical master, who would receive a considerably higher salary than the
mathematics master at RMS. Three other RNA teachers would provide instruction in writing,
cyphering, drawing, fortification, and other areas of mathematics, and there would also be
teachers for French and fencing. Students in the second year of the RNA program would be
required to work in the Portsmouth dockyard, under the supervision of a master attendant,
master shipwright and boatswain, for two days each week (p. 34). On leaving the three-year
program, the students would be carefully supervised during their early years as seamen. They
would be required to maintain journals in which they would make accurate sketches of
coastlines that they would encounter (in addition to standard journal entries). It was required
that each young RNA graduate should record their progress in a Plan of Learning which had
been designed by Thomas Haselden, the first head of RNA (Dickinson, 2007).
So far as the purpose of preparing adequately trained seamen was concerned, the RNA
program probably had a better design than the RMS program. That said, the RNA program
was, clearly, heavily influenced by what had been learned during the first 60 years of
operating and developing the RMS program. The RNA boys began their program at
approximately the same age as the RMS boys began theirs. The book components of the
mathematical and navigation studies in the two schools were almost identical. Interestingly,
the similarities in the book components of the RNA and RMS curricula continued throughout
the remainder of the eighteenth century, When John Robertson, RMS master, was appointed
RNA principal in 1755, he used the book that he had written specifically for RMS students as
the main text at RNA. When, in 1764, he produced the next edition of this book he noted in
his Preface that the RNA students were of middling capacities (Robertson, 1764, p. iii)
implying that on the whole the more selective RMS students were academically stronger than
RNA boys.
The RNA was not the first educational institution to base its book curriculum and
program structure on what had been developed within RMS. From 1705 onwards the Royal
Hospital School at Greenwich received students, and in 1715 arrangements were made for 10
boys to attend the school under the headmastership of Thomas Weston (Turner, 1990). Like
James Hodgson, Weston had worked with John Flamsteed in the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich, and he had often tutored RMS boys. The navigation program within the Royal
Hospital school combined theory and practice in much the same way as did the RNA
program. Among the outstanding navigators the Hospital School produced was Captain (later
Admiral) Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of the colony of New South Wales, and the man
who successfully guided the first fleet from England to Port Jackson (close to Botany Bay)
(Turner, 1990).
After the establishment of RMS many other private schools in Great Britain, especially
those often described as dissenting academies, included theoretical and practical studies of
mathematics and navigation in their curricula (Bellhouse, 2010). It is difficult to escape the
conclusion that the establishment of RMS at Christs Hospital provided a model for private
entrepreneurs who moved to establish schools which offered instruction in mathematics and
navigation (Money, 1993). In fact, the beyond-school influence of the Christs Hospital RMS
program would reach across Great Britain, and even to far-flung places like the North
America colonies, and Russia (Blanch, 1877; Ellerton & Clements, 2014; Ivashova, 2011).
Hodgsons Retreat into Research, Writing and Publishing 17231755
Hodgsons Research Publications After 1723

James Hodgsons mentor, the Reverend John Flamsteed, died on the last day of 1719,
just at a time when Hodgson was struggling to complete his massive two-volume A System of
the Mathematics. When that was finally published, in 1723, Hodgson turned his attentions to
the task of preparing and publishing an overview of Flamsteeds astronomical findings.
Less than six years after Flamsteeds death, his classic Historia Coelestis Britannica
(Flamsteed, 1725) was published. It listed details about 3000 stars that Flamsteed had
studied, with the relative positions of the stars being described much more accurately than
ever before. This astronomical colossus provided a complete and updated version of what
Halley had published, against Flamsteeds wishes, in 1712. Above all else, the publication
testified to the loyalty and genius of James Hodgson, who, with Flamsteeds widow,
Margaret, carefully analyzed and synthesized Flamsteeds records. Despite all the pressures
stemming from the history of Flamsteeds bitter dispute with Halleywho had succeeded
Flamsteed as Astronomer RoyalHodgson and Margaret Flamsteed created an impressive
text, replete with complex maps, that could be published without Flamsteeds reputation
being tarnished.
Four years later, in 1729, Atlas Coelestis was publishedthis was attributed to the late
Rev. Mr Flamsteed, Regius Professor of Astronomy at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich,
and dedicated to his most sacred Majesty, King George II, King of Britain, France and
Ireland, by His Majestys most humble most dutiful, and most obedient servants, Margaret
Flamsteed [Flamsteeds widow] and James Hodgson. Margaret Flamsteed and Hodgson
completed their introduction to the work with the following claim:
Hodgsons Retreat into Research 139
And lastly, as the principal view of the Royal Founder of the Observatory was to
obtain a good catalogue of the fixed stars, so it must be justly acknowledged that
Mr Flamsteed has fully accomplished that great end, having left behind one of the
largest and compleatest catalogues that ever the world was enriched with. From
which these charts are deduced, containing almost the double number of stars in
that of Heveliuss to the honour of the British nation, and the lasting reputation of
the author; a work that will render his name famous to the latest posterity, and
perpetuate his memory till time shall be no more. (Flamsteed, 1729, p. 9)
The reality is that the two posthumously-published Flamsteed publications would never have
seen the light of day without the expertise, devotion, and selflessness of Flamsteeds loyal
protg, James Hodgson. In the maps in Atlas Coelestis Hodgson utilized a very precise grid.
The star positions that were shown were based on telescopic observations which John
Flamsteed had checked and re-checked, and had hesitated to publish, over the course of his
long career as the first Astronomer Royal of England (Boorstin, 1983).
Hodgsons academic work during the 1720s in finalizing his A System of the
Mathematics and editing and publishing Flamsteeds Historia Coelestis Britannica and
Atlas Coelestis seemed to whet his appetite for further research and publication, and during
the last 30 years of his life he authored numerous research publications. In addition to the
numerous short communications in Hodgsons name which appeared in Philosophical
Transactions (a journal of the Royal Society) he authored larger works such as The Theory of
Jupiters Satellites (1749), the Doctrine of Fluxions (1736), The Valuation of Annuities
(1747a), and An Introduction to Chronology (1747b). Interestingly, in his 1736 text on
fluxions Hodgson had the courage to question aspects of Isaac Newtons original
development of the concepts of calculus (Guicciardini, 2003).
Hodgsons Declining Powers as a Teacher

The time given to preparing and publishing large, intricate and scholarly works had a
costHodgson, whose daily work was principally that of RMS master, would give less and
less of his time outside of normal school hours to preparing for his RMS classes. Old age
would catch up with him, and the quality of his work within Christs Hospital would suffer.
The behavior of the more senior RMS boys deterioratedthus, for example, minutes of the
Committee of Almoners for April 12th, 1728, reported:
This Committee being informed of diverse irregularities and ill practices chiefly by
the boys in the upper class and sometimes by the boys in the second class of the
Royal Mathematical School, by insulting, beating, and keeping in subjection the
other children of that Foundation and taking from them their monies, caps and
other things and compelling them to go on errands and do servile offices in
cleaning their shoes, waiting and being attendant on them as servants. In order to
prevent such scandalous practices for the future this Committee do order that if
any boy or boys in that school shall henceforth misbehave him and themselves
towards others of them in any of the instances before mentioned or otherwise, such
boy or boys so offending shall be brought before the Committee in order to their
being examined that the boy or boys may be punished as the Committee shall
judge proper.
Not long after making that decision, the Committee of Almoners reported (minutes, May 10,
1728) that two RMS boys had behaved insolently to a teacher in the Great Hall, and the
Committee ordered that the boys do wear clog and collar on Wednesday morning next and
that they do not presume to appear out of a ward school or hall during that time.
As the years passed, Mr Hodgsons charisma and teaching powers waned, and in 1745
the external examiner to RMS, a Mr Brakenridge, reported to the Committee of Almoners
that although the students performed the mechanical parts well they were defective in the
science and do not answer my expectations (April 4th, 1745). In other reports, Mr
Brakenridge told the Committee that the RMS boys do indifferently well and he wished
that they were taught more of geometry and of the use of globes. In another report, Mr
Brakenridge complained about the boys lack of knowledge of astronomy and geography,
and of middle latitude sailing.
Hodgson was now well into his 60s, and was clearly struggling to cope with his day-by-
day teaching duties. On May 2nd, 1746, the Committee directed that one of the RMS
graduates not be put to sea, but become James Hodgsons apprentice; but, apparently this
strategy of getting cheap labor was not successful, for on December 20th, 1747, the
following revealing entry appeared in the minutes of the Committee of Almoners:
This Committee, taking into their consideration on the state and condition of the
Royal Mathematical School in this Hospital, that Mr James Hodgson, master of the
said School (being advanced in years) be desired to nominate to this Committee on
or before the meeting of the next Committee, a fit person to assist him in the said
School; and in case he does not comply therewith that this Committee will provide
one. And ordered that the Treasurer be desired to acquaint Mr Hodgson with this
resolution.
Hodgson asked the Committee to find a person, and on February 4, 1748, Mr John
Robertson was proposed by the Committee, to assist Mr Hodgson (who is far advanced in
years). Robertson accepted an offer of 40 pounds per annum to become second master of
RMS. The 40 pounds would be deducted from Hodgsons annual salary, and Hodgson would
be allowed to continue to live in the house which he and his family had occupied for 39
years. Robertson served as assistant master of RMS until Hodgsons death in 1755.
One interpretation of the above account of Hodgsons reign as RMS master might be
that he was unsuccessful insofar as he failed to establish strong discipline within the school
and that, particularly towards the end of his life, he was not an effective teacher of
mathematics and navigation. Such an interpretation is not consistent with the data,
particularly those data for the crucially-important period 17091725. In December 1747 the
Committee of Almoners did not dismiss Hodgson, even though it had the power to do so. The
Committee clearly recognized the great contribution Hodgson had made to Christs Hospital,
and its respect for the man was sufficiently great that it was prepared, as a mark of respect, to
continue his employment, despite his advanced yearsand despite his declining powers.
In that sense, the story confirms our interpretation that Hodgson had made large
contributions to the school.
James Hodgson, and the History of School Mathematics
The following passage, reproduced from an official Christs Hospital publication

(Committee of Old Blues, 1953), illustrates how the work of James Hodgson, in particular,
and the RMS, in general, has been portrayed negatively through a sequence of official or
James Hodgson and the History of School Mathematics 141
semi-official histories of Christs Hospital. The message in these publications is that, with the
exception of William Wales, the RMS masters were poor educators with defective
personalities; that, in particular, Hodgson was absent-minded and someone who was not
taken seriously by other Christs Hospital teachers; and that it was not until William Wales
appeared in 1775 that an acceptable level of control over RMS students was achieved (see,
for example, Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834).
One Upper Grammar master, Peter Selby (17251737), and one famous and
learned master of the Royal Mathematical School, James Hodgson, F.R.S. (1708
1755), come to life in the pages of The Fortunate Blue-Coat Boy (1770), a
picaresque novel, after Fielding, composed by a wit who disguised himself as
Orphano-trophian.
Mr Henchman [Steward at C. H. from 17231741], thinking the wine a little
flat, handed a bottle to Mr Hodgson, who sat next to the fire, desiring him to set it
down to air a little, to revive it: he, turning his chair, set it on the hearth, and kept
occasionally turning it, from one side to the other, towards the fire, the whole
time descanting upon the nature and properties of the air, telling the company,
that the air contained in the wine within the bottle, by the warmth of the fire,
would rarify and expand itself, and unless the cork had been drawn (which by the
bye he never looked at) would, for want of expansion, burst the bottle, which was
the reason why in warm weather, beer, cyder, and other liquors of a windy nature,
often either forced the corks out of the bottle, or else burst the bottles themselves;
for that the air contained in the inside must have room to expand itself, and if it
could not force out the cork would burst the bottle. Mr Selby listened to this
learned dissertation upon wind corked up with liquor in a bottle, and observing
that the cork was not drawn, kept it up until eye and ear demonstrations was given
of the truth, to the no small diversion of the company; for Mr Hodgson, without
ever perceiving the deficiency of the corks not having been drawn, kept on
turning the bottle, and explaining the effects of air when enclosed, till the bottle
burst in his hand, but as it happened to fly towards the neck, the liquor was the
greatest part preserved by Mr Henchmans pouring it out of the bottle into a bowl,
and thence into a decanter. On the explosion of the bottle, Mr Hodgson looked at
Mr Selby, saying, Why, Peter, you saw the cork was not drawn, why did you not
tell me of it? Oh Jemmy! replies Mr Selby, I thought you were a philosopher; Im
sure you told us you was one; and how should I know that you might be minded
to prove your assertion to the company (as you have done) by an experiment? The
company then thanked Mr Hodgson for his philosophical discourse upon the force
of air, by which he had not only delivered, but experimentally proved, saying,
they should be careful for the future how they set a bottle of wine to air, without
first drawing the cork, as they were, they saw, if they did, in great danger of
losing it. (Quoted in Committee of Old Blues, 1953, pp. 3334)
Immediately following this quotation came the judgment: If the administration of the Royal
Mathematical School was not always satisfactoryRobert Woods health, Samuel Newtons
incompetence as a teacher, Hodgsons absent-mindedness rendering the staff at a
disadvantage with their sturdy and lawless pupilsthe Foundation exerted an influence on
the Royal Navy (p. 34).
School historians who have commented on the Royal Mathematical School have
delighted in retelling stories of misbehavior by RMS boys (see, for example, the section
titled An Eighteenth Century Mathemat, pages 34 and 4347, of Committee of Old Blues,
1953). These same historians rarely fail to add words to the effect that proper governance
came with the appointment of Captain Cooks colleague, William Wales, in 1775 (p. 34).
The Grammar School never forgave Hodgson who in 1709 revealed to the Committee
of Almoners that Grammar School graduates who entered RMS had hardly learned any
Latin. There is evidence that what Hodgson said of the lack of educational effectiveness of
the Grammar School still applied in the 1740s, when the Committee of Almoners felt the
need to appoint a committee to work out ways by which the teaching in the Grammar School
could be improved (minutes of the Committee of Almoners, November 8th, 1744; February
5th, 1745). And, the same was true even in the 1780s when Charles Lamb was a student in
the Grammar School and the famous, but notoriously cruel, James Boyer was Upper
Grammar School master (Blanch, 1877; Gray, 1833).
The writers of this book believe that, contrary to the official viewpoint presented in
histories of Christs Hospital, Hodgson was an intellectual giant, one of the few scholars
capable of bringing to publication John Flamsteeds momentous work in mapping the
heavens. He was also one of Christs Hospitals greatest teachers (Allen, 1970), and it was
largely the result of his teaching powers that Christs Hospital came to be recognized as
having one of the finest pre-university mathematical programs in the world. Certainly, in
1773, two years before Wales became RMS master at Christs Hospital, RMS and RNA (at
Portsmouth), were described by an independent reviewer as the two most eminent
mathematical schools in Great Britain (A Society of Gentlemen, 1773, p. 130).
It is a travesty of justice that in Nick Plumleys article titled The Royal Mathematical
School, Christs Hospital, which appeared in the August 1973 issue of the well-regarded
journal, History Today (pp. 581587), the name James Hodgson does not appear even
once. Taking the lead from William Trollope (1834), and Edward Pearce (1901), Plumley
(1973) maintained that William Wales had been the most successful of all RMS masters. In
his description of the early years of RMS, Geoffrey Howson did not mention Hodgson,
either, which is hardly surprising given that he admitted that what he wrote about the Royal
Mathematics School was almost entirely based on Pearces (1901) Annals of Christs
Hospital (see Howson, 1982, p. 245, note 22).
References
A Society of Gentlemen. (1773). Review of Robertsons The Elements of Navigation. The
Critical Review: Or Annals of Literature, 35, 130134.
of Reading.
Bellhouse, D. (2010, May). The mathematics curriculum in the British dissenting academies
in the 18th century. Paper presented at the meeting of the Canadian Society for the
History and Philosophy of Mathematics, held in Montral.
Bellhouse, D. (2014). The deification of Newton in 1711. BSHM Bulletin, 29(2), 98110.
Boorstin, D. J. (1983). The discoverers. New York, NY: Random House.
Christs Hospital (16731865). Minutes of the Committee of Almoners. Volumes of
Hamilton.
Davies, J. D. (2008). Pepyss navy: Ships, men & warfare. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth
Publishing.
Ditton, H. (1709). Appendix to the algebra of John Alexander. London, UK: Christs
Hospital.
Flamsteed, J. (1729). Atlas coelestis. London, UK: H. Meere.
Gardy, K. E. (2011). For their maintenance and education: An analysis of children entering
Christs Hospital, London, 17631803. Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, The College
of William and Mary (Virginia).
Gray, R. (1833). The last essays of Elia. London, UK: Moxon.
Guicciardini, N. (2003). The development of Newtonian calculus in Britain, 17001800.
Hodgson, J. (1708). Miscellanea curiosa: Containing a collection of some of the principal
phnomena in nature, accounted for by the greatest philosophers of this age; being the
most valuable discourses, read and deliverd to the Royal Society, for the Advancement
of Physical and Mathematical Knowledge. Vol ii. To which is added the laws of
stereographick projection. London, UK: James Knapton.
Hodgson, J. (1723). Asystem of the mathematics containing the Euclidean geometry, plane
stereographic, astronomy, the use of the globes and navigation(2 vols.). London, UK:
Thomas Page.
Hodgson, J. (1736). The doctrine of fluxions, founded on Sir Isaac Newtons method.
London, UK: T. Wood.
Hodgson, J. (1747a). The valuation of annuities upon lives deduced from the London bills of
mortality. London, UK: J. Hinton.
Hodgson, J. (1747b). An introduction to chronology, containing an account of time. London,
UK: J. Hinton.
Hodgson, J. (1749). The theory of Jupiters satellites. London, UK: W & J. Mount.

Money, J. (1993). Teaching in the market place, or Caesar adsum jam forte: Pompey
aderat: The retaining of knowledge in provincial England during the 18th century. In
J. Brewer & R. Porter (Eds.), Consumption and the world of goods (pp. 335377).
London, UK: Routledge.
23(8), 581587.
Robertson, J. (1764). The elements of navigation (2nd ed.). London, UK: C. Nourse.
Rothman, P. (2009). William Jones and his circle: The man who invented pi. History Today,
59(7), 2430.
Society.
Taylor, E. G. R. (1966). The mathematical practitioners of Hanoverian England 17141840.
Pickering.
Willmoth, F. (1997). Introduction: The Kings astronomical observer. In F. Willmoth
(Ed.), Flamsteeds stars: New perspectives on the life and work of the first Astronomer
Royal (16461719) (pp. 116). Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press.
Chapter 7
William Wales: RMS Master 17761798
Abstract: William Wales was RMS master from 1776 to 1798. At the time of his
appointment he was obviously full of the practical navigation experience that might be
expected of anyone accepting the responsibility of preparing boys to take up sea-related
apprenticeships. Between August 1768 and September 1769, he had coped with the wilds,
and the bitter cold, of Hudson Bay, in Canada, on a successful Royal Society mission to
observe a transit of the planet Venus. Then, between 1772 and 1775, he had accompanied
Captain James Cook on Cooks second major journey. During his time at Christs Hospital,
Wales developed a more positive attitude towards the work of the Grammar School than had
previous RMS masters, and Trollope and Pearce claimed that he succeeded in stabilizing
RMS operations. Both Trollope and Pearce lauded Wales as the greatest of the RMS masters,
but in this chapter that assessment of Waless performance as RMS master is problematized.
Keywords: Arthur William Trollope, Charles Lamb, Christs Hospital, Hudson Bay, James
Cook, History of school mathematics, James Boyer, James Hodgson, John Robertson, Leigh
Hunt, Mathematics education, Navigation education, Royal Mathematical School, Royal
Society, Trinity House, William Trollope, William Wales
RMS in 1776, when William Wales was Appointed Master

When, early in 1776, William Wales accepted the position as RMS master he must
have appeared to be the perfect appointment. Not only had he had vast practical experience
as a navigatorhaving accompanied Captain James Cook on Cooks second major journey
(Orchiston, 2016; Wales, 1788)but he had also proved himself to be someone who could
cope with difficult circumstances (Pearce, 1901; Taylor, 1966; Trollope, 1834; Williams,
1979, 2003). During 1768 and 1769 he had negotiated the freezing wilderness of Hudsons
Bay, in Canada, when, for the Royal Society, he had successfully documented the transit of
Venus as seen from that remote vantage point (Hudon, 2004; Wales & Dymond, 1770).
Furthermore, his numerous publications on mathematics (see, for example, Wales, 1772) left
no-one in any doubt that he was an accomplished mathematician.
Like James Hodgson, Wales had an outstanding up-to-date knowledge of technology
related to navigation. In particular, during Cooks second voyage his primary task had been
to test Larcum Kendalls K1 chronometer, based on the famous H4 chronometer developed
by John Harrison (Forster, 1778). On that voyage, Wales compiled a log booknow held in
the archives of the Royal Greenwich Observatoryrecording locations and conditions, the
use and testing of the instruments entrusted to him, as well as making many observations of
the people and places encountered at various stages of the voyage (Wales, 1775, 1788).
According to the Committee of Old Blues (1953), and school historians like Trollope
(1834) and Pearce (1901), Wales became RMS master at a time when the Royal Foundation
had endured a long sequence of masters who had not been able to control its students and had

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_7
146 7. William Wales: RMS Master 17761798
not produced a steady stream of graduates ready to become effective apprentices in the Royal
Navy or merchant marine. But was that assessment of the state of affairs for RMS in 1776
justified? We now consider, briefly, some strengths and weaknesses of the RMS program
that William Wales inherited when he took up his position at Christs Hospital.
Strengths of the RMS Program Inherited by William Wales

The first edition of John Robertsons The Elements of Navigation, the textbook used on
a daily basis by RMS students between 1755 and 1775, had been written by Robertson in the
early 1750s when he was an assistant master within RMS. By 1776, Robertsons text was
regarded as a classic. Thus, William Wales inherited a program based on a textbook that was
recognized as one of the finest, indeed perhaps the finest, of the English-language navigation
education manuals of its time. Eva Taylor (1966) described it as the standard work for all
serious study of the theory and practice of navigation, and a veritable seamans library (p. 35).
Not only did The Elements of Navigation fit perfectly the intended curriculum for
RMS, but when Robertson moved from Christs Hospital to the Royal Naval Academy
(RNA), late in 1755, his book was also used to define the intended mathematical and
navigational curricula at that institution (Robertson, 1764). In a review of a new edition of
The Elements of Navigation which appeared in Philosophical Transactions in 1773, RMS
and RNA were described as the two best mathematics schools in England (A Society of
Gentlemen, 1773, p. 130). Soon after Robertson died, in 1777, William Wales decided to
revise the book and in the fullness of time a textbook, also titled The Elements of Navigation
but now attributed to Robertson and Wales (1780), appeared. For all intents and purposes it
was essentially the same as the earlier editions which had carried Robertsons name only.
Unlike James Hodgson, almost 70 years earlier, Wales did not have to write from scratch a
textbook for his RMS studentsbut he was happy to attach his name, as a joint author, to
what was essentially the existing textbookand thereby to give the impression that he had
devoted much energy to curriculum revision.
Furthermore, at the beginning of 1776 John Robertson was not only now the much-
respected Librarian for the Royal Society but he also served as a Christs Hospital examiner
(minutes of the Committee of Almoners, March 27th, 1776). And, ever since two RMS
graduates had helped Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, to establish the main navigation school
in Russia, early in the eighteenth century (Ellerton & Clements, 2012; Ivashova, 2011), RMS
had enjoyed a high reputation abroad (Blanch, 1877). Thus, for example, in the 1760s
Thomas Penn, of Pennsylvania, had employed Daniel Harris, RMS master at that time, and
John Robertson, the former RMS master, as consultants when the famous Mason-Dixon line
was being surveyed (Cope, 1949). It was not coincidental that the implemented curriculum
for students enrolled in a navigation subject at Harvard Collegeas reflected in the content
and appearance of navigation cyphering books prepared by students of that College in the
second half of the eighteenth centuryfollowed the Christs Hospital model of navigation
education (Ellerton & Clements, 2012, 2014).
Robertson was not the only RMS master in the post-Hodgson era to be well recognized
as a scholar. Thus, for example, when James Dodson was master, between 1755 and his
death in 1757 (Gray, 2004), he prepared a table of the value of annuities that was published
in the Royal Societys Philosophical Transactions (Dodson, 17551756). Dodsons
successor, Daniel HarrisRMS master from 1757 to 1775not only assisted in the drawing
up of the Mason-Dixon line in the United States of America but also published a paper on
RMS in 1776 147
Observations of the Transit of Venus over the Sun, made at the Round Tower in Windsor
Castle (Harris, 1769).
Thus, the validity of claims that when Wales arrived at Christs Hospital he found RMS
in a sick and sorry state needs to be checked against the high reputation RMS enjoyed
outside of the school at that time. In fact, there is evidence that when Wales took up his
position as master, the Royal Mathematical School had been performing well as part of the
overall Christs Hospital enterprise. During the 1760s and early 1770s the number of boys
seeking to become RMS students was always close to the desired numberwhich was
noteworthy, given that this was a time when the total student enrolment at Christs Hospital
was less than what had usually been the case (Gardy, 2011; Mansell, 2014; minutes of
Committee of Almoners, 17601776especially, minutes for March 27th, 1776).
Weaknesses in the RMS Program Inherited by William Wales

It could be argued that the biggest weakness in the RMS program inherited by William
Wales at the beginning of 1776 was that the mathematical and navigational studies required
for examination by Trinity House were too difficult for 14- to 16-year old boys who had not
had a strong preparation in mathematics before entering RMS. That weakness had never been
the fault of RMS masters but rather of luminaries like Samuel Pepys, Jonas Moore, Isaac
Newton and Trinity House personnel who had designed the early RMS programs at various
times during the last quarter of the seventeenth century.
Almost all of the boys who participated in the RMS program between 1673 and 1776
had, before being selected as Kings Boys, learned to read and write in the Reading and
Writing schools at Christs Hospital. Many of them had also spent four years studying mainly
Latin texts in the Lower Grammar School. Despite the original agreement that all boys
entering RMS should have studied arithmetic to the rule of three, the fact was that most of
those who were accepted into the RMS program knew very little arithmetic. Indeed, in June
1785, after William Wales had been at Christs Hospital for almost a decade, he thought it
necessary to draw the attention of the Committee of Almoners to just how little mathematics
the boys being admitted to the RMS program actually knew (see minutes of the Committee
of Almoners, June 14, 1785). Of seven boys admitted at that time, only one of them
understood the Hindu-Arabic place-value systemand that boy was also the only one who
could add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers.
To bring boys with such a low knowledge of basic arithmetic to the point where they
would have a chance of comprehending the lofty mathematical standards set out in the RMS
textbook, and required by Trinity House examiners, within the space of 18 months was a
very challenging, and perhaps impossible, task. So, basically, the solution adopted by all
RMS masters was to require their students to copy mathematical text, in their best-possible
handwriting, and to get them to draw the often-complex diagrams shown in the textbook, on
impressive RMS-supplied pages which, ultimately, would be included in full-leather-bound
navigation cyphering books. Then, in their final year, before they appeared before Trinity
House examiners, the students would cram answers to likely examination questions into their
heads. And, of course, the boys would put together their beautiful cyphering books ready to
be shown to the King of England (Ellerton & Clements, 2012).
Not surprisingly, one of the consequences of the boys having to cope with a very
difficult RMS mathematics and navigation curriculum was that many of them did not
understand what they were asked to learn, and so they lost interest. The first century of
RMSs existence provided many examples of resistance from RMS students. Some students
ran away, some bullied younger students within RMS, some bullied younger students in non-
RMS programs, and some gave cheek to mastersboth to RMS masters and to masters in
other programs within Christs Hospital (Pearce, 1901).
The RMS boys lived in a particular dormitory within the extensive Christs Hospital
grounds. They slept two-to-a-bed, and were supervised in out-of-class hours by a nurse who
had the responsibility of caring for them. Given the circumstances, it was not surprising that
many kinds of misbehavior occurred, and occasionally these were reported to the Committee
of Almoners. Almost inevitably, the RMS master at the particular time was blamed for not
being able to keep the mathemats (the name given to students in the RMS) under control. It
is doubtful whether such blame attribution was fair. A careful reading of the minute books of
the Committee of Almoners reveals that non-RMS boys, including Grammar School boys,
also misbehaved.
During the first half of James Hodgsons long tenure as RMS master he had gained a
measure of control over most of his students. That was probably because he earned their
respect as a result of his excellent teaching. He made sure he had the latest and best
equipment, and almost every day he engaged his students in practical work which helped
them to begin to understand the often-difficult mathematics and navigational principles
which were under consideration. But, gradually, Hodgson allowed himself to be drawn into a
world in which the writing of learned treatises on mathematics, or astronomy, or navigation,
assumed greater importance for him than getting his students to understand what they were
expected to learn. Individualized approaches to learning inherent in the cyphering tradition
(Ellerton & Clements, 2012) were the order of the day, and whole-class teaching was rarely
attempted. Except for the early Hodgson years, RMS classes merely required students to
copy large amounts of complex text, and it is likely that since most of the students did not
understand what they copied they were easily distracted, and prone to engage in acts of
misbehavior.
Yet, ironically, by 1776, the external reputation of RMS had steadily grown to the point
where Christs Hospital was thought to have the strongest school mathematics program in the
nation. Some believed it had the strongest school mathematics program in the world (A
Society of Gentlemen, 1773; Hans, 1951a, 1951b; Stewart, 2001).
Internal PoliticsRMS and the Grammar School During the Period when William
Wales was RMS Master
Throughout the eighteenth century Grammar School masters were irked by the high
external reputation enjoyed by RMS. At every meal time the whole school was reminded
through the huge Verrio painting in the Great Hallhow the school ethos had, from the
Grammar Schools perspective, been hijacked by politicians and mathematicians. A careful
reading of the minutes of the Committee of Almoners reveals that during the second half of
the eighteenth century the Grammar School worked at increasing its own political influence
within the schooland at reducing that of the Royal Mathematical School. That comment
was particular true of the period from 1776 to 1799, when the Reverend James Boyer was
master of the Upper Grammar School and, simultaneously, headmaster of Christs Hospital
(Mansell, 2014). The years of Boyers ascendancy had a large intersection with Waless
years as RMS master (from 1776 to 1798). Boyer was a fine classical scholar who is
portrayed in most histories of Christs Hospital as one of the Schools greatest headmasters
RMS in 1776 149
(see, for example, Trollope, 1834; Pearce, 1901). Our perspective, admittedly from a great
distance in time and space, sees Boyers headmastership in an altogether different light.
Boyers period as Grammar School master corresponded to a tumultuous period in the
history of England. Between 1775 and 1783 England fought and lost a war against its former
North American colonies and during that period the number of pirates and privateers who
were prepared to attack British ships increased dramatically (McMillan, 2011). Becoming a
student within RMS, and therefore committing oneself to an apprenticeship of seven years at
sea, was not necessarily an attractive thing for a talented youngster to do, especially when
there were scholarships available to selected Grammar School students who wished to attend
the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford.
The Reverend James BoyerA violent and jealous headmaster. Boyer was prone
to extraordinary fits of violence (Blanch, 1877). Most famously, he knocked out one of Leigh
Hunts teeth by throwing a heavy copy of Homer at his head (Johnson, 1896). In The
Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, Hunt (1870) recalled the tyrannical unfairness of Boyer and
his violence towards his studentsand claimed that the only thing that seemed to stop him
from bashing or kicking a student who offended him was if the student threatened to report
him to the Schools Governors.
Charles Lamb, also a student of Boyer, stated that he could never forget Boyers violent
behavior towards, and in front of, his students. Lamb (1885) wrote:
I have known him double his knotty fist at a poor trembling child (the maternal
milk hardly dry upon its lips) with a Sirrah, do you presume to set your wits at
me?Nothing was more common than to see him make a head-long entry into
the school-room, from his inner recess, or library and, with turbulent eye, singling
out a lad, roar out, Ods my life, Sirrah (his favourite adjuration). I have a great
mind to whip youthen, with as sudden a retracting impulse, fling back into his
lairand, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the culprit
had totally forgotten the context) dive headlong out again, piecing out his
imperfect sentence, as if it had been some Devils Litany, with the expletory yell
and I WILL, too. (p. 27)
According to Lamb (1901), in his gentler moods Boyer resorted to an ingenious method
of whipping the boy and reading the debates at the same time; a paragraph, and a lash
between (p. 18). Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another of Boyers students, praised Boyer for
his knowledge of the classics, but recognized the unfairness and arbitrariness of his discipline
(Johnson, 1896). According to Leigh Hunt (1870), when Coleridge learned that Boyer was
on his death-bed, he said it was lucky that the cherubim who took him to heaven were
nothing but faces and wings, or he would infallibly have flogged them by the way (p. 67).
This, then, was the example and tone set by the head of the school for most of the time
William Wales was at Christs Hospital. Boyers tendency to bully his students was matched
by his determination to reduce the prestige of RMS, which he regarded as his Grammar
Schools major competitor so far as prestige within the school was concerned. Our reading of
the minutes of the Committee of Almoners suggests that Boyer systematically took steps to
reduce the influence of RMS and to elevate the influence of his Grammar School. More will
be said on this issue later in this book.
There is a sense in which William Wales had a unique role to play in this political
struggle within the school because he would develop a close relationship with key personnel
within the Grammar School. His son, William Wales Junior, who was enrolled at Christs
Hospital between 1780 and 1786 (Gardy, 2011; Mansell, 2014), was such an outstanding
student within the Grammar School that he became its top graduate (a Grecian) who would
be sent, by the school, on a Christs Hospital exhibition, to St Johns College at the
University of Cambridge (Trollope, 1834, p. 304). In 1797, Waless daughter, Sarah, would
marry the Reverend Arthur William Trollope, a former Christs Hospital Grammar School
student who would also be awarded a Christs Hospital exhibition to Cambridge University
where he would study classics, and would graduate M.A. in 1794, and D.D. in 1815.
William Wales and the Trollopes. Arthur William Trollope was appointed
headmaster of Christs Hospital in 1799. He had married William Waless daughter, and his
son, the Reverend William Trollope, would be an assistant master in the Grammar School for
10 years (Jones, 2015; Pearce, 1901). It was the Reverend William Trollope who authored A
History of the Royal Foundation of Christs Hospital (Trollope, 1834).
The above genealogical analysis makes it likely that it would have been difficult for the
Reverend William Trollope to write about the work of William Wales Senior at Christs
Hospital in an objective way, for he was a grandson of William Wales Senior. William
Trollopes father, the Reverend Arthur William Trollope, had served as executor to William
Wales Seniors will (which was dated October 6th, 1798). It is understandable that Wales
developed positive relationships with the Grammar Schoolhis son, William Wales Junior,
had been a top student within the Grammar School, and there can be little doubt that it was
because of the recommendation of James Boyer that William Wales Junior was awarded the
exhibition to study classics at the University of Cambridge. Given these relationships, it is
hardly surprising that the Reverend William Trollope (1834) wrote about William Wales
Seniors work as RMS master in glowing terms. Trollopes evaluation of Waless work as
RMS master has been accepted, uncritically, by most other writers on the history of Christs
Hospital (e.g., Johnson, 1896), and in this book that work has been re-assessed.
Not everyone saw William Wales in the same way that William Trollope did. George
Forster, a naturalist who accompanied James Cook and William Wales on Cooks second
voyage around the world, on the Resolution, would accuse Wales of jealousy and slander,
someone who was prepared to stoop to malicious disposition (Forster, 1778, p. 6). Within
what Forster (1778) called the dark cloisters of Christs Hospital (p. 9), Wales might have
been well regarded, but Forster, who had co-inhabited with Wales the confined spaces of the
Resolution, alleged that there were serious defects in his character.
Charles Lambs comments on RMS under William Wales. Charles Lamb (1775
1834), essayist and poet, and one of Christs Hospital most celebrated pupils, was a student
at Christs Hospital between 1782 and 1789 (Gardy, 2011; Johnson, 1896; Mansell, 2014).
His higher studies at the school were in the Grammar School, and his only direct experiences
of the RMS was during a period when William Wales was well established as RMS master.
Johnson (1896) described Lamb as an amiable gentle boy with a speech impediment.
After referring to the chosen few (the Grecians) within the Grammar School as the
Muftis of the school, Lamb wrote about RMS and William Wales in the following famous
passage:
Charles Lamb on RMS Students 151
As I ventured to call the Grecians the Muftis of the school, the Kings boys, as
their character then was, may well pass for the Janizaries. They were the terror of
all the other boys; bred up under that hardy sailor, as well as excellent
mathematician, and co-navigator with Captain Cook, William Wales. All his
systems were adapted to fit them for the rough element which they were destined
to encounter. Frequent and severe punishments, which were expected to be borne
with more than Spartan fortitude, came to be considered less as inflictions of
disgrace than trials of obstinate endurance. To make his boys hardy, and to give
them early sailor habits seemed to be his only aim; to this everything was
subordinate. Moral obliquities, indeed, were sure of receiving their full
recompensefor no occasion of laying on the lash was ever let slip; but the effects
expected to be produced from it were something very different from contrition or
mortification. There was in William Wales a perpetual fund of humour, a constant
glee about him, which, heightened by an inveterate provincialism of North
Country dialect, absolutely took away the sting from his severities. His
punishments were a game at patience, in which the master was not always worst
contented when he found himself at times overcome by his pupil.
What success this discipline had, or how the effects of it operated upon the
after-lives of these Kings boys, I cannot say: but I am sure that, for the time, they
were absolute nuisances to the rest of the school. Hardy, brutal, and often wicked,
they were the most graceless lump in the whole mass: older and bigger than the
other boys (for, by the system of their education, they were kept longer at school
by two or three years than any of the rest, except the Grecians), they were a
constant terror to the younger part of the school; and some who may read this, I
doubt not, will remember the consternation into which the juvenile fry of us were
thrown when the cry was raised in the Cloisters that the First Order was coming
for so they termed the first form or class of those boys. Still these sea-boys
answered some good purposes in the school. They were the military class among
the boys, foremost in athletic exercises, who extended the fame of the prowess of
the school far and near; and the apprentices in the vicinage, and sometimes the
butchers boys in the neighbouring market, had sad occasion to attest their valour.
(Quoted in Talfourd, 1838, Vol. 2, pp. 345346)
The above passage was destined to be often repeated as a form of unofficial evaluation of
the early years of the RMS, and of the influence of William Wales on RMS (see, e.g.,
Committee of Old Blues, 1953, pp. 6667 and p. 99; Gray, 1833; Wilson, 1820, pp. 6566).
Leigh Hunts Comments on RMS. (James Henry) Leigh Hunt (17841859) attended
Christs Hospital between 1791 and 1799 (Gardy, 2011; Mansell, 2014)a period which
took in the final years of William Waless period as RMS master. Like Lamb, Hunt became a
famous essayist, literary critic, and poet; also like Lamb, he was never a student within RMS
and thus his knowledge of RMS was indirect. Hunt stated that he regarded the dauntless
bravery of the mathemats as a very unpleasant thing to encounter, and he recalled how,
a few days before the end of a term boys in non-RMS dormitories were startled by the
stentorian bellow: Who wants to belong to the Royal Mathematical School?
Hunts reference to the need to recruit boys from within Christs Hospital who would
be prepared to enter RMS testifies to the difficulty that Wales experienced in filling the quota
of RMS boys during his time as RMS master. Despite the obvious advantages with respect to
possible future employment attached to studying in the RMS, most Christs Hospital boys
were reluctant to become mathemats. By agreeing to be mathemats they would be given the
opportunity to learn more advanced forms of mathematics and navigation than was learned
by 99.9 percent of the general population. They would be permitted to stay on at the school
for at least two additional years, and during that time all of their school expenses would be
paid, and free board and lodging would be provided. On graduation from Christs Hospital,
they would be guaranteed apprenticeships. Each student would receive, free-of-charge, a set
of clothes, and several books and instruments to assist him in his work as a seaman
(Committee of Almoners, November 1st, 1780); and he would have an opportunity for
adventure by which he would travel the world.
Yet, perusal of the minutes of the Committee of Almoners for the period when Wales
was RMS master (17761798) suggests that Wales never found it easy to fill the requisite
quota of boys in RMS, and he was increasingly prepared to accept, as RMS students, boys
who knew virtually no mathematicsnot even how to add, subtract, multiply and divide
whole numbers (minutes of the Committee of Almoners, June 14th, 1785).
Trollopes and Pearces flawed interpretations of the RMS-related texts by Lamb
and Hunt. Since both William Trollope (1834) and Ernest Pearce (1901) seemed to rely
heavily on the statements by Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt in their commentaries on the
history of RMS, it is important to recognize that what Trollope and Pearce wrote about RMS
was not based on first-hand experiences in RMS classes; nor were their interpretations based
on a strong knowledge of the history of RMS.
The following points are worthy of note:
Lamb and Hunt attended Christs Hospital when William Wales was the only RMS
master, and it is likely that they had no knowledge of the work of earlier RMS
masters. They only rarely witnessed directly the teaching of William Wales.
From what Lamb, in particular, wrote it appears that RMS students believed that
heavy corporal punishment was the norm within RMS classes conducted by
William Wales. There is even a strong hint, from Lamb, that sometimes Wales
actually fought, physically, with his students.
Both Lamb and Hunt believed that under William Wales, the behavior of RMS
senior students, both inside and outside of RMS classes, was unruly. The RMS boys
did not seem to have been disciplined to behave in a decent, and gentlemanly,
manner. They were thought of as the bullies of the school.
Even within the school, Wales did not succeed in developing the reputation of RMS
as a worthwhile place to study. He struggled to get enough boys to fill the RMS
quota, and the students he did get were often very weak academically.
If one accepts as true what Lamb and Hunt wrote about RMS boys, and about William
Wales, then the judgments by William Trollope and Ernest Pearce that William Wales was
the most successful RMS master during the first 125 years of the Royal Foundations
existence ought to be scrutinized. There is no evidence that RMS boys under Wales reached
higher standards in mathematics and navigation than under previous masters, and therefore
there appears to be no real basis for the high opinion of Waless work at Christs Hospital.
He has been glorified as Captain Cooks colleague (Committee of Old Blues, 1953, p. 34)
and for developing and maintaining a reputation for adopting a harsh, militaristic climate
William Waless Methods of Teaching 153
within RMS classes. If that was indeed the case it is hardly surprising that he did not succeed
in reducing the extent of bullying by older RMS students.
Seen from the above vantage points, it is likely that Trollopes (1834) views on
William Wales were colored by the fact that Trollope was Waless grandson. The truth is
more likely to be that, far from being the saviour of RMS, Wales presided over a period
when the RMS lost influence within the school and struggled to attract high quality students.
But Trollopes (1834) point of view on Wales was repeated by Pearce (1901), and also by
later commentatorssuch as the Committee of Old Blues (1953), who, rather simplistically,
wrote that proper governance of RMS came with the appointment of Captain Cooks
colleague, William Wales in 1775 (p. 34).
William Waless Methods of Teaching

As far as we know, there are no written recollections by RMS students on the methods
used by William Wales in his RMS classes. However, by examining an extant navigation
cyphering book prepared by James West (1786), a mathemat during Waless time, and by
comparing entries in that cyphering book with the text of Robertson and Waless The
Elements of Navigation, inferences about the teaching methods employed by Wales can be
made.
The fifth edition of The Elements of Navigation (Robertson & Wales, 1786) was
published after Wales had been RMS master at Christs Hospital for a decade. We have
compared the contents of that textbook with the contents of Robertsons (1754, 1764) first
and second editions of the book, and have found that in fact, for almost all topics, Robertson
and Waless (1786) fifth edition was made up, almost entirely, of passages from the earlier
Robertson textschapter for chapter, word for word, model example for model example, and
diagram for diagram. Although John Robertson died in 1777, both the 1780 fourth edition
and the 1786 fifth edition of The Elements of Navigation were almost identical to earlier
editions which carried just Robertsons name.
James Wests (1786) Navigation Cyphering Book

James West was a student at Christs Hospital between 1780 and 1786. He was born in
February 1770, the son of James West, a brasier (someone who worked in the preparation of
coal products). After graduating from RMS in August 1786, he was apprenticed to Thomas
Nixon, master of the 330-tons Amity, which was bound for Jamaica (Clifford Jones to M. A.
Clements, personal communication, November 12, 2013). James Wests navigation
cyphering book is held in the William L. Clements Library, at the University of Michigan
(Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA), and that is where we examined it on several occasions
between 2009 and 2015.
James West copied much of the material in his cyphering book directly from
Robertsons (or Robertson and Waless) The Elements of Navigation. James probably knew
very little mathematics when, in 1785, he began to prepare his cyphering book, and that was
reflected in the elementary arithmetic summarized in the early pages of his cyphering book.
In the section headed Subtraction, he wrote:
Subtraction is the method of taking one number from another, and shewing the
remainder or difference, or excess.
The subducend is the number to be subtracted or taken away.
The minuend is the number from which the subducend is to be taken.
Rule 1st. Under the minuend write the subducend, so that like names stand under
like names, and under them draw a line.
Beginning at the right hand side, take each figure in the lower line from the
figure standing over it, and write the remainder, or what is left, beneath the line,
under that figure.
But if the figure below is greater than that above it, increase the upper figure by
as many as are in an unit of the next greater name; from this sum take the figure in
the lower line, and write the remainder under it.
To the next name, in the lower line, carry the unit borrowed, and thus proceed
to the highest denomination or name.
This same passage appeared, word for word, comma for comma, in Robertson and Waless
(1786) The Elements of Navigation (p. 8). Furthermore, the six model examples which
followed Robertson and Waless (1786) notes on subtraction were the same model examples
as those given in early editions of Robertsons The Elements of Navigation (see, e.g., the
1754 first edition, pp. 89; and the second edition, 1764, pp. 89).
It seems to be likely that William Wales did not give much thought to how children
might best learn to subtract or to how he should teach subtractionhe simply asked
mathemats to copy out relevant notes, originally written by Robertson, from their textbook.
Comparisons of what James West wrote in his cyphering book, for all of the topics that he
was asked to learn, with corresponding texts in Robertson and Waless (1786) book show
that when James was preparing most of the pages in his cyphering book he merely copied
from the textbook. Interestingly, when Waless RMS graduates became apprentices they
were given copies of Robertson and Waless The Elements of Navigation as a parting gift by
their school (minutes of the Committee of Almoners, November 1st, 1780). Thus, the young
apprentices would not only have had ready access to their own cyphering books but also to a
textbook which contained almost all of the words that they had written in those cyphering
books.
We are not criticizing Wales for getting the students to copy notes out of a textbook
into their navigation cyphering booksfor by the 1780s and 1790s that method of teaching
had become common in Great Britain (see, e.g., Denniss, 2012; Ellerton & Clements, 2012,
2014; Stedall, 2012; Wardhaugh, 2012). What is most relevant to this book is that when the
mathematics became more difficult (in topics like logarithms, plane trigonometry, spherical
trigonometry, and astronomy, for example), there was little chance that students like James
West would have understood what they were copyingunless, of course, the copying was
complemented with recitation sessions in which students were questioned, on a one-to-one
basis, about what they were studying. Or, the content might have been explained during
whole-class or group teaching sessions, or with practical sessions in which students used
relevant equipment. We have not seen any evidence that those desirable extras were part of
Waless implemented curriculum. It is likely that the individualized form of instruction, by
which students were expected to copy and learn passages prescribed by the master during
one-on-one recitation sessions, would not have permitted Wales to carry out whole-class or
group instruction or practical sessions.
Distortion of the History of RMS 155
William Wales, William Arthur Trollope, Ernest Pearce, and the Distortion of the
History of the Royal Mathematical School
RMS was established in 1673 and for much of the next 100 years it was arguably, from
both internal and external vantage points, the most prestigious academic component within
Christs Hospital. But, from the time William Wales became RMS master, early in 1776, the
Grammar School, which was responsible for the teaching of the classics, gradually overtook
RMS in influence and prestige. In this chapter we have argued that a study of politics internal
to Christs Hospital is particularly important for those wishing to interpret statements and
judgments related to RMS in the widely-read histories of Christs Hospital by William
Arthur Trollope (1834) and Ernest H. Pearce (1901). Both of those histories were written by
classical scholars who, as former Christs Hospital Grammar School students, wrote from a
Grammar-School perspective.
Problems of Interpreting Accounts of the Early History of RMS

Chapter 5 of the Reverend Ernest Harold Pearces (1901) Annals of Christs Hospital,
which is titled The Grammar School, begins with the following passage:
It will be necessary to occupy a considerable space hereafter with an account of the
Mathematical Foundation of King Charles II, and it will appear from that account
that the Grammar School was not always able to hold its own against the Kings
School. But, with a longer history at its back, and with practically all the great
names in the Hospitals roll of fame on its books, the Grammar School claims the
priority, and up to the present it has always been a Grammar School master who is,
nominally or actually, the Head Master. (p. 65)
Pearce tended to see the history of Christs Hospital in terms of a struggle for prestige
between the Grammar School and the RMSand, from his vantage point, he believed that
the Grammar School ultimately won the day.
Later in his chapter on the Grammar School, Pearce (1901) referred to difficulties
experienced by the Reverend Samuel Mountfort, who was the Upper Grammar School
master between 1682 and 1719. He stated that in Mountforts time the new sciences were
very, very new, much as Dr Isaac Newton was doing to make them familiar (p. 73), and
asserted that Mountfort found himself having to prepare a sufficient supply of Latin-taught
pupils for the Kings new foundation. Pearce added: He might see his best material filched
from him to pass under his colleague, the mathematical master, without it being in his power
to protest (p. 73). How Mountfort must have been offended when, in 1709, he was called
before the Committee of Almoners after the new RMS master, James Hodgson, had
complained to the Almoners that RMS students had not learned Latin well enough during
their years in the Grammar School to be able to cope with expectations within the RMS
program.
Pearces (1901) claim that the Grammar School ultimately proved itself to be superior
to RMS in the battle for prestige because some of its students had become famous could have
been easily challenged by a knowledgeable visitor to the school. Respect for an academic
program is not necessarily mainly garnered by the existence of a few well-known alumni.
While gazing up at the massive Verrio painting depicting an event in the early history of
RMS, our visitor might have been less impressed with the attention given to former Grammar
School stars such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, and Charles Lamb if he or she
had been given cause to reflect on the galaxy of stars in RMSs firmamenta galaxy which
included Samuel Pepys, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, John Flamsteed,
Edmond Halley and William Wales. Although none of those luminaries was ever a student at
Christs Hospital, they were all stars in the RMS firmament (Blanch, 1877).
On reading the minutes of the Committee of Almoners for the period that William
Wales was RMS master we could not avoid noticing the growing power, and influence on the
Committee of Almoners, of the Grammar School. This was the era when James Boyer was
head of the Grammar School and therefore, by default, of the whole school. Those present at
meeting after meeting of the Committee of Almoners were informed that hundreds of young
boys had been accepted into the lower Grammar School; they were also told, at the same
meetings, that many of those who had been previously accepted were now being sent back to
the Writing School, because they had been deemed not to be able to cope with Grammar
School demands (see, for example, minutes of the Committee of Almoners, October 6th,
1779; November 1st, 1785). Back in Hodgsons era, Hodgson had been allowed to choose
outstanding boys for the Grammar School to fill RMS vacancies (see, for example, minutes
of the Committee of Almoners, June 17, 1720), but under William Wales this did not happen.
Wales got weak students from the lower Grammar School, or from the Writing School.
Admittedly, this transformation of the relativities of curriculum power within Christs
Hospital had gradually taken place since the final years of Hodgsons RMS mastership, but
certainly Wales did nothing to challenge it. He seemed to be meekly accepting a situation
whereby the Grammar School would get the best and brightest students, and his Royal
Mathematical School would mainly receive leftovers who, on graduation, would be
expected to go to sea.
The Standard Argument with Respect to RMS in Histories of Christs Hospital

Both Trollope (1834) and Pearce (1901) argued that RMS did not contribute positively
to the tone or the educational efficiency of Christs Hospital until William Wales became its
master. In building their case to support that contention they made the following five claims:
1. In agreeing to establish his Royal Mathematical Foundation, King Charles II had
diverted a large, but contested, bequest to the School so that the use of the money
was applied to the establishment of the new Foundation. Trollope and Pearce both
pointed out that although RMS was officially designated as a Royal Foundation,
the 7000 pounds used to establish RMS was owed to the Hospital as a result of a
bequest originally made to the Hospital in the 1640s. Furthermore, they
emphasized, the amount of establishment money (1000 pounds per year for seven
years) did not meet all of the expenses associated with establishing RMS.
2. Almost all RMS masters before William Wales were poor teachers. Throughout the
first century of its existence RMS was unable to find masters who were able to cope
with the academic demands of the curriculum and the expectations of the Hospital.
3. Early RMS masters tended to keep their senior boys at the school beyond the
maximum age (16 years) stipulated in RMS regulations. Trollope and Pearce
contended that the retention of over-age students in RMS was commonplace until
William Wales became master.
4. Except for the period when William Wales was master, the general behavior of
RMS boys was often totally offensive. In particular, senior RMS students bullied
younger studentsboth within RMS and in other sections of Christs Hospital.
Both Trollope and Pearce claimed that William Wales succeeded in turning around
that state of affairs.
5. No RMS graduate ever distinguished themselves in their later lives to the same
extent as Grammar School graduates like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Lamb,
and Leigh Hunt.
We would contend that each of the above five claims derived from a blinkered, Grammar-
School perspective of the history of Christs Hospital. We would further claim that, in fact,
none of the claims is unequivocally supported by available data.
We now look, briefly, at each of the five claims.
Did King Charles II illegally misuse a Christs Hospital bequest? The argument that
Charles IIs grant of 1000 pounds for seven years was hardly a Royal benefaction, for it was
money already bequeathed, in 1646, to Christs Hospital by a Governor, Richard Aldworth
(Committee of the Old Blues, 1953, p. 14), is one that is repeated in most histories of Christs
Hospital (see, for example, Hale, 1855, p. 42; Pearce, 1901, p. 102). The implication of such
an argument seems to be that Charles II used the Aldworth bequest to further his own ends,
insofar as the establishment of the Royal Mathematical School suggested that RMS had been
established directly from money provided by the King. The fact that this argument has been
so often repeated has suggested that this selfish motive of the King had the potential to
jeopardize the financial situation of Christs Hospital because, after seven years, the funding
from the royal coffers would terminate.
An incontrovertible fact is that serious damage to the Schools buildings in 1666,
caused by the Great Fire of London, meant that much of the School needed to be rebuilt.
Much of the income of Christs Hospital had come from tagged bequests and donations,
and it was not unreasonable for those administering the school to agree to the creation of a
Royal Mathematical School that would provide instruction in mathematics and navigation if
that was the wish of major benefactors. And, in fact, much of the rebuilding was funded by
donations from Sir Robert Clayton and Sir John Frederick, two strong supporters of RMS
(Thornbury, 1878; Wilson, 1821). Jones (2015) has argued, strongly and probably correctly,
that the initiative to establish RMS came from Christs Hospital, and especially from
schools governors, and not from Samuel Pepys.
The conditions applying to the Richard Aldworth legacy called for Christs Hospital to
use the money to educate and traine ... forty poore children in reading of English writing,
ciphering, catechizing, and understanding the Latine tongue (Pepys Library, Magdalene
College, University of Cambridge, Manuscript 2612). The establishment of RMS was not
something which breached this requirement. Furthermore, no a priori argument has ever
been offered proving that the main aim of the Christs Hospital, as a school, should have
been to prepare a relatively small number of students to become clergymen, or to enter
learned professions such as Law. Similarly, no a priori argument has ever been presented
showing that it was inappropriate for the School to prepare a relatively small number of
persons for maritime careers. Around 1670 a school with a strong emphasis on mathematics
and navigation did not exist in Englandand, therefore, from the perspective of needing to
improve national defence and to encourage trade, one might argue that using Richard
Aldworths legacy for the purposes of establishing RMS was not only legally acceptable but
also eminently sensible. As Jones (2015) shows, leading Christs Hospitals officials were
happy to move forward with the idea of establishing RMS, once it became clear that that
would result in the school getting access to funds attached to the Aldworth bequest.
To those who might assert that the Aldworth bequest should not have been spent on the
creation of RMS it is worth pointing out that the school got other significant benefits as a
result of the decision to do sosignificant and extensive new buildings were added (Pearce,
1901) with donors for the Great Hall being more easily found as a result of the prestige added
to the School by its association with the new Royal Foundation. In fairness, it should also be
pointed out that some writers on the history of Christs Hospital have recognized that that
was indeed the case (see, e.g., Wilson, 1821).
Seen from the perspective that it was as legitimate for Christs Hospital to have a
specialist mathematics/navigation component as part of its overall program as it was to have
a specialist Grammar School which concentrated on the classics, any suggestion that the
tagging of Richard Aldworths legacy to the school to assist the establishment of the Royal
Foundation was a devious misuse of school funds would appear to be illogical.
Were almost all the RMS masters before William Wales poor teachers? Between
1673 and 1775 there were nine RMS mastersJohn Leeke (16731677), Peter Perkins
(16781680), Robert Wood (16811682), Edward Paget (16821695), Samuel Newton
(16951708), James Hodgson (17091755), John Robertson (17481755), James Dodson
(17551757), and Daniel Harris (17571775)and until Clifford Joness (2015) recent
book, most Christs Hospital historians had generally lumped almost all of them together as
incompetent. The only exceptions, according to the historians, might have been Peter
Perkins, who died before he had an opportunity to have much influence, and John Robertson,
who was master, in his own right, for only a brief period (in 1755) before departing to be
Head of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth. Jones (2015) reports data which strongly
suggest that Daniel Harris, the master before William Wales, was a very good teacher, and
did excellent work as RMS master. That is consistent with the fact that in the early 1770s, an
independent review in a learned and respected journal (A Society of Gentlemen, 1773) stated
that Christs Hospital was one of the two strongest mathematical schools in all of Great
Britain.
Christs Hospital was the first school, possibly anywhere in the world, to offer
mathematics beyond abbaco arithmetic to schoolchildren who came from ordinary
backgrounds. Never before, as far as we know, had students aged between 12 and 16 years
attending school, other than at small specialist private establishments, been required to study
forms of mathematics which included topics like decimal fractions, logarithms, plane
trigonometry, spherical trigonometry, and the application of these topics to solving problems
associated with the various types of sailing, and astronomy (Davids, 2001).
It is important to our main argument in this book to indicate, here, that in defending the
early RMS teachers against the allegations of inefficiency leveled against them in histories of
Christs Hospital, and in pointing out that the school managed to achieve a high reputation
for its mathematical program, we are not inferring that we believe that the RMS program was
educationally sound. In fact, we believe that the RMS intended curriculum, as it was
originally conceived and implemented, was unrealistically complex, and not suited to the
intellectual readiness of almost all 12- to 16-year-old students. The curriculum had been
defined by persons like Samuel Pepyswho himself hardly knew any mathematics; Jonas
Moore, whose teaching career had been mostly with private students (like the future King
James II); and Edmond Halley and Isaac Newton, who seemed to have no idea of the level of
mathematics that ordinary schoolchildren could reasonably be expected to learn, and had
little, if any, experience in teaching mathematics to students between 12 and 16 years of age.
Speaking bluntly, the intended curriculum was inappropriate. But, curiously, the high status
associated with the galaxy of stars who developed the RMS program, meant that outsiders
believed that the list of topics, and the quality-assurance mechanisms associated with Trinity
Houses assessment of graduates, had produced an outstanding intended curriculum, and the
only thing lacking, until William Waless arrival, was high quality teaching.
It is our view too, that learning problems deriving from an inappropriate intended
curriculum were compounded by a serious assessment problem arising from the fact that
Pepys deliberately put in place a quality-assurance mechanism whereby Trinity House
navigation experts would be responsible for assessing the quality of the implemented and
received curricula. Conceptually the idea was fine, but a problem arose because the Trinity
House experts did not have much experience in teaching 12-to-16-year-olds. Yet, the internal
politics of the situation demanded that the qualifications, opinions and assessments of the so-
called expert examiners were not to be questioned.
The curricular expectations were unreasonable, and therefore it was not surprising that
the RMS mastersall of whom had strong mathematical backgrounds but no formal training
in how best to teach mathematicsresorted to getting their students to prepare handwritten
mathematics and navigation pages which featured beautiful penmanship, high-class
calligraphy and, sometimes, exquisite line drawings embellished with fine water coloring.
Some of the pages showed royal watermarks. The final product would be a navigation
cyphering book formed when the pages were bound between heavy leather covers in which
royal insignia were engraved. The preparation of these books corresponded to the
implemented curriculum. But, often, during school days, masters were not even present in the
large room in which mathemats prepared pages for their journals (Ellerton & Clements,
2014). Upon graduation, the young men took their books with them on board the ships to
which they were assigned. Whether these cyphering books were widely used on the voyages
in which the RMS graduates participated during their periods of apprenticeship is a subject
which would be worthy of further research.
The intended RMS curriculum looked extraordinarily impressive to outsiders, and the
implemented curriculum, as represented by the navigation cyphering books, seemed to be
equally impressive. It is not surprising, then, that the outside world wanted to emulate what
Christs Hospitals RMS had, apparently, shown to be possible. And so, a form of
mathematics for the people was introduced. We would argue that outside of Christs
Hospital the RMS mathematics-beyond-arithmetic program for capable teenage children,
was thought to be highly successful, but internally, within Christs Hospital, it was well
known that RMS masters struggled to cope with their workplace situation. Interested
outsiders might have marveled at the high standards which were set and, apparently,
achieved by RMS students, but insiders had different views on what was achieved.
Given these circumstances it would be decidedly unfair to accuse the early RMS
masters of being poor teachers. Indeed, we believe that James Hodgson was an exceptionally
fine teacher. Before arriving at Christs Hospital in 1709 he had probably been the most
highly regarded of the numerous, and often very highly qualified, coffee-house lecturers in
mathematics in London (Stewart, 1999, 2001).
From our perspective William Wales survived mainly as a result of his reputation
arising from his link to Captain James Cookand the harsh rgime he instituted so far as
corporal punishment was concerned. There is no evidence that he was any better teacher than
any of the earlier RMS masters. His reputation as the RMS master who saved the RMS
from anarchy is undeservedit probably owes much to the fact that he was the grandfather
of the Reverend William Trollope, and to the fact that Waless son, William Wales Junior,
was an outstanding student in the Grammar School.
Did most of the early RMS masters keep most of their RMS students at school
until they were well over the age of 16? The short answer to that question is no. Ages of
students entering the RMS can be checked from records kept by Christs Hospital and
although, very occasionally, RMS students aged 17 were allowed to remain at the school that
was not regarded as desirable. The Almoners Committee kept a close eye on the ages of
RMS students (see, e.g., minutes for the Committee of Almoners for the meeting on May 9th,
1677, which recorded that a boy aged 16 had been removed from the RMS).
Ken Mansells (2014) analysis of admissions to Christs Hospital between 1552 and
1902 has revealed that there was a sharp increase in overall admissions to Christs Hospital
during the Wales period. But at that time the number of RMS boys was held at 40, or less
than that. Mansell (2014) analyzed the ages of Christs Hospital students when they entered
the school (see, p. 32), but he did not provide a separate analysis showing the ages of RMS
students when they left school. But that analysis has been made possible by Clifford Joness
(2015) listing of the ages at which most RMS graduates took up apprenticeships (see, Jones,
2015, pp. 267303). Our analysis suggests that RMS boys during the Wales period were, on
average, about the same age as RMS boys during the period 17091775. Certainly, entries in
the minutes of the Committee of Almoners show clearly that although enrolments in the
Grammar School varied considerably during the eighteenth century, that was not the case
with RMS enrolments. Certainly, too, the most senior students in the Grammar School,
especially the Grecians, tended to be older than the oldest RMS boys.
Did William Wales succeed in quelling previously poor behavior of RMS boys,
and in particular did he rectify the situation whereby senior RMS students bullied
younger RMS students and other students at Christs Hospital? After a careful analysis
of school records, Clifford Jones (2015) concluded that, on average, the behavior of RMS
boys during Waless mastership was worse than the behavior of RMS boys before Wales
became master. Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt did not sit in RMS classes, but, from what
they recalled of their times at Christs Hospital, they thought that RMS boys during the
Wales period were not well behaved either in class, or outside of the classroom.
Recollections of Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt suggest that the biggest bully within
Christs Hospital during their times at the school was the Reverend James Boyer, the Head of
the Grammar School. It is also clear from the writings of Lamb and Hunt that during William
Waless time as RMS master the senior RMS boys tended to behave as bullies within the
school. Furthermore, Waless methods of disciplining his students, as this was reported
indirectly by Lamb and Hunt, would suggest that Wales himself was a bully, and was
someone who encouraged his students to adopt an aggressive stance toward others.
The short answer to the question, then, is no, the behavior of RMS boys did not
improve under William Waless mastership.
Did William Waless teaching produce outstanding future seamen? The quality of
work done by apprentice seamen who had attended RMS has not been well documented, and
therefore it is not possible to answer this question, one way or the other, from available data.
Ken Mansell (2014) listed 30 former Christs Hospital students who, in his judgment,
deserved to be known as notable Old Blues because of their naval service (see pages 59
Concluding Comments 161
60). Of those 30, only one (Captain Michael Everett) was from the Hodgson era, and only
one (Thomas Withers) was from the Wales era.
Concluding Comments
In 1776 the Christs Hospital community had every reason to be proud that William
Wales had become the new RMS master. Wales was undoubtedly an outstanding navigator
and astronomer, and there could be no doubt that his reputation had been hard-won. Not only
had he done excellent work, for the Board of Longitude, on the Resolution during James
Cooks lengthy second voyage of exploration between 1772 and 1775, but before that, during
the late 1760s, he had bravely endured the wilds of Hudson Bay, in Canada, when gathering
data for his detailed and well-regarded report on the transit of Venus in June 1769. And even
before that, in 1765 he had been based at Greenwich, assisting Nevil Maskelyne, the fifth
Astronomer Royal (Taylor, 1966). Furthermore, he had often made original contributions to
journals on theoretical and practical matters associated with mathematics, navigation, and
astronomy. He had done all of that and yet when he took up his appointment, in 1776, he was
still in his early forties.
Wales would be RMS master for more than 22 years, and during that time he presided
over a program that continued to produce 16-year old boys who had learned a sufficient
amount of mathematics and enough of the theory of navigation to be able to satisfy external
examiners, appointed by Trinity House, that they were ready to begin apprenticeships in the
Royal Navy or in the merchant marine.
References to Wales by old Grammar School boys like Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb
strongly suggest that the Wales was well regarded, even admired, by Christs Hospital boys
who were not RMS students. He seems to have brought RMS into a closer relationship with
the Grammar School, possibly because his son, William Wales Junior, became a Grecian
within the Grammar School and therefore won the favor of James Boyer, the famous, but
tyrannical, master. Boyers period as Grammar School master (and therefore headmaster of
the school) coincided almost exactly with William Wales Seniors period as RMS master.
There is no strong evidence, however, to support the contention that William Wales did
outstanding work as RMS masterdespite such a claim having been made by Waless
grandson, William Trollope (1834) and by others (e.g., Allan & Morpurgo, 1984; Blues
and the Royal Navy, 1900; Committee of Old Blues, 1953; Pearce, 1901). During Waless
period as RMS master he increasingly accepted very weak students into RMS, probably
because Boyer would not allow his best Grammar School students to move into the RMS.
The longstanding and notoriously bad behavior of RMS boys around the school continued to
manifest itself, and Waless harsh disciplinary procedures within RMS classes merely
offered a model which provided psychological justification for RMS boys to bully non-RMS
younger boys at Christs Hospital.
Curiously, during Waless RMS mastership the external reputation of Christs Hospital
as an outstanding mathematical school was maintained, despite the likelihood that under
Wales the mathemats merely copied notes from Robertson and Waless The Elements of
Navigation. The RMS curriculum itself was never called into question by anyone, including
Wales himself, despite RMS boys experiencing difficulty understanding it.
Although William Wales served Christs Hospital well, we have argued that the quality
of his work at the school has been exaggerated. He does not deserve to be remembered as an
outstanding teacher and disciplinarian, and historians claims that he lifted RMS from the
jaws of collapse into a thriving institution distort the history of RMS. In particular, claims by
Trollope (1834) and Pearce (1901) that Wales was the first and, perhaps, the only, really
effective RMS master have drawn attention away from the outstanding achievements, at
Christs Hospital, of the longest-ever serving master of RMS, James Hodgson. They also
draw attention away from the excellent work of the RMS master who preceded Wales
Daniel Harris. We would agree with the anonymous reviewer of Trollopes (1834) book who
commented on William Trollopes tendency to relapse from the historian into the school
orator, adding that he was prone to making ex cathedra judgments (ReviewTrollopes
History of Christs Hospital, 1834, p. 523). Perhaps William Trollope was more the
Grammar Schools orator than the schools orator.
References
Books.
Blues and the Royal Navy. (1900, November 24). The Navy and Army Illustrated, 245
249.
Christs Hospital. (16731868). Committee of Almoners, minutes. Volumes of handwritten
manuscript (held in the London Metropolitan Archives).
Hamilton.
Cope, T. D. (1949). Mason and Dixon: English men of science. Philadelphia, PA: University
of Pennsylvania (Thomas Darlington Cope Papers, UPT 50 C782).
Davids, K, (2001). Amsterdam as a centre of learning in the Dutch golden age, c. 15801700.
In P. OBrien, D. Keene, M. Hart, & H. van der Wee (Eds.), Urban achievement in
early modern Europe: Golden ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London (pp. 305325).
Dodson, J. (17551756). A letter to the Reverend William Brackenridge, D. D., Rector of
Mich. Bassishaw, and F.R.S. with a table of the value of annuities on lives.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 49, 891892.
Ellerton, N. F., & Clements, M. A. (2014). Abraham Lincolns cyphering book, and ten other
Forster, G. (1778). Reply to Mr. Waless remarks. London, UK: R. White.
Gray, G. J. (2004). Dodson, James (c. 17051757). In A. McConnell (Ed.), Oxford dictionary
of national biography (online). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hale, W. H. (1855). Some account of the hospital of King Edward VI in the City of London,
called Christs Hospital: Its past and present condition. London, UK: Rivingtons.
Harris, D. (1769). Observations of the transit of Venus over the Sun, made at the Round
Tower in Windsor Castle. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London,
59, 422431.
Hudon, D. (2004). A (not so) brief history of the transits of Venus. Journal of the Royal
Astronomical Society of Canada, 98(1), 620.
Hunt, J. (1870). The autobiography of Leigh Hunt. London, UK: Smith, Elder & Co.
Johnson, R. B. (Ed.). (1896). Christs Hospital: Recollections of Lamb, Coleridge and Leigh
Hunt, with some account of its foundation. London, UK: George Allen.
Lamb, C. (1885). Essays of Elia and other pieces. London, UK: George Routledge and Sons.
Lamb, C. (1901). The complete works of Charles Lamb in prose and verse. London, UK:
Chatto & Windus.
Mansell, K. (2014). Christs Hospital pupils 15521902. Twickenham, UK: Ashwater Press.
McMillan, M. M. (2011). Gather the shadowmen: The lords of the ocean. Richardson, TX:
Hephaestus.
Orchiston, W. (2016). Exploring the history of New Zealand astronomy: Trials, tribulations,
telescopes and transits. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
ReviewTrollopes History of Christs Hospital (1834). The Gentlemans Review. 1, 520
524.
Robertson, J., & Wales, W. (1780). The elements of navigation (4th ed.). London, UK: C.
Nourse.
Nourse.
Stedall, J. (2012). The history of mathematics: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK:
Talfourd, T. N. (Ed.). (1838). The works of Charles Lamb, to which are affixed his letters
and a sketch of his life. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.
Thornbury, W. (1878). Old and new London: A narrative of its history, its people and its
places. London, UK: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.
Pickering.
two books by William Wales. London, UK: G. Bigg.
Wales, W. (1775). Log book of HMS Resolution. Royal Greenwich Observatory Archives,
Greenwich (see also Cambridge Digital Library).
Wales, W. (1788). Astronomical observations made voyages which were undertaken by
order of his present Majesty for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere ...
London, UK: P. Elmsley.
Wales, W., & Dymond, J. (1770). Observations on the state of the air, winds, weather, etc.
made at the Prince of Waless Fort, on the north-west coast of Hudsons Bay, in the
years 1768 and 1769. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 60, 137178.
Wardhaugh, B. (2012). Poor Robyns prophecies: A curious almanac, and the everyday
West, J. (1825). Elements of navigation. Handwritten manuscript prepared at Christs
Hospital. Held in the Clements Library, University of Michigan.
1800). (pp. 757758). Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto.
Williams, G. (2003). Wales, William. Dictionary of Canadian Biography (Vol. 4). University
of Toronto/Universit Laval, 2003, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wales_william_4E.
html.
Wilson, J. I. (1820). A brief history of Christs Hospital, from its foundation by King Edward
the Sixth to the present time, with a list of the governors. London, UK: Author.
Wilson, J. I. (1821). The history of Christs Hospital from its foundation by King Edward
VIin which are added memoirs of eminent men educated there, and a list of the
governors. London, UK: John Nichols and Son.
Chapter 8
Redefining School Mathematics at Christs Hospital 18001868
Abstract: During the period 18001868 there was a large increase in the number of pupils at
Christs Hospital who studied mathematics beyond arithmetic. The school began to offer
more mathematics to more students largely because senior Grammar School students needed
to become better acquainted with mathematics if they were to have a chance of gaining
honours degrees at the University of Cambridge. The RMS continued to exist, and its
students continued to follow the traditional RMS curriculum, but, with other elite schools
increasingly embracing mathematics beyond arithmetic, it was not long before Christs
Hospital lost its reputation as having the best school mathematics program in the nation. This
chapter explores factors which contributed to the widespread changes in school mathematics
at Christs Hospital during the period by analyzing answers that the Reverend William
Websterthe long-serving head of the Mathematical Schoolgave, in 1865, to questions
asked of him when he appeared before the Taunton Royal Commissioners.
Keywords: History of school mathematics, Navigation education, Royal Mathematical

School, Schools Inquiry Commission, Taunton Commission, The University of Cambridge,
The University of Oxford, Tripos, William Trollope, William Webster
School Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic in British Higher-Level Schools After 1800

In 1577, Christs Hospital established an endowed Writing School (Freeman, 1913)
which included cyphering as a key component of its curriculum (Christs Hospital, 1595).
The arithmetic that students entered into their cyphering books would probably have
emphasized numeration, the four operations on whole numbers, compound operations with
quantities, reduction, and the direct rule of three (Ellerton & Clements, 2012). It was not until
1673, with the creation of RMS, that any form of mathematics beyond elementary arithmetic
became available to any Christs Hospital student. During the period 16731797 most of the
mathematics beyond arithmetic offered in the school came through the RMS program, but in
1797 a bequest from Samuel Travers was used to expand the number of students taught
mathematics beyond arithmetic (Hale, 1855). Like the RMS students, however, those who
entered the school though the Travers bequest followed a curriculum in which all the
mathematics was specifically oriented towards navigation.
During the early years of the nineteenth century the increasingly powerful Grammar
School lobby within Christs Hospital recognized that, in view of the new mathematical
requirements for an honours degree at the University of Cambridge, senior Grammar School
students needed to be more extensively prepared in mathematics than ever before.
Dr Lawrence Gwynne, RMS master between 1800 and 1813, resisted the idea that he should
have a heavier workload because the Grammar School wanted to prepare its students in
mathematics. However, the Committee of Almoners, which was numerically dominated by

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_8
166 8. Redefining School Mathematics 18001868
clergymen and others inclined to support the Grammar School, did not agree with him. At its
November 1812 meeting the Almoners ruled:
That the first class of the Grammar School who are designed for the University,
should attend the Mathematical School on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and
that the mathematical master be required to instruct them in those branches of
mathematical knowledge which are most requisite for their future studies in the
universityviz, Euclids Elements, algebra, conic sections, plane and spherical
trigonometry, fluxions, mechanics, optics, hydrostatics, astronomy. (Minutes of the
Committee of Almoners, November 26th, 1812)
Gwynne was, apparently, unhappy with this decision and early in 1813 he resigned his post
(Christs Hospital, minutes of the Committee of Almoners, April 14th, 1813).
Between 1778 and 1826, when James Boyer and then Arthur William Trollope was
head of the Upper Grammar School, the assumption that classics were the jewels in the
crown of academic studies continued to hold sway within Christs Hospital (see Figure 4.2 in
Chapter 4 of this book). Increasingly, though, that assumption began to be questioned in the
world beyond Christs Hospital. Indeed, at the University of Cambridge in the early
nineteenth century it was not possible to obtain a bachelors degree with honours unless one
secured a place in the Universitys Mathematical Tripos examination (Craik, 2007). From
about 1790, the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos, a printed examination to which written
answers were required, became enormously influentialand doing well on that examination
was recognized as a sure sign of intellectual prowess (Craik, 2007; Roach, 1971).
The situation at the University of Oxford with respect to mathematics was different
from that at the University of Cambridge. At Oxford, a student could not graduate in
mathematics until he had first graduated in classical subjects, whereas in the first half of the
nineteenth century a man could not graduate with honours in classics from Cambridge until
he had graduated in mathematics (Stedall, 2008; Willis, 2013).
Between 1673 and 1837 Christs Hospital provided a relatively small number of
scholarships which enabled Grecians to attend the two ancient universities. More of the
Grecians went to Cambridge than to Oxford, and hence the mathematical requirements of
Cambridge had a stronger effect on the thinking of heads of the Grammar School at Christs
Hospital than did the Oxford requirements. In 1835 a petition was presented to the Court of
Chancery by the President and governors of Christs Hospital, with a view to persuading the
Court to change the system of allocating funds for exhibitions to the Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge. The petitioners submitted that the existing benefactions set forth in the
schedule, amounting altogether to the annual sum of 488 pounds 9 shillings and 3 pence,
should be consolidated and considered as an aggregate, applicable generally and alike in
affording exhibitions to scholars from Christs Hospital. The Hospitals governors agreed to
supply, from the schools general funds, the present and any future deficiency of the annual
sum of 560 pounds so required. The proposal was approved and confirmed by the Court of
Chancery, with the governors being empowered to appoint four exhibitioners every year, of
whom three would proceed to Cambridge, and one would have the choice of going to Oxford
or Cambridge. An exhibitioner to Oxford would receive 100 pounds each year and at
Cambridge the amount would be 80 pounds a year. Exhibitioners would be allowed to hold
their exhibitions for four years (Potts, 1855).
Despite the existence, since 1673, of the Royal Mathematical School within Christs
Hospital, during the first half of the nineteenth century there were still governors of the
School Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic After 1800 167
school who were reluctant to accept the view that the study of mathematics could be
educationally valuable. In particular, most governors and members of the Committee of
Almoners did not believe that the study of higher mathematics could be as educationally
worthwhile as the study of Latin or Greek. Nevertheless, these same governors and almoners
were prepared to compromise their long-held educational valuesthey decided that if a
Cambridge honours degree required a place on the Tripos honours list then the School, and in
particular the Grammar School, would have to fall into line (see Historical and Descriptive
Notice of Christs Hospital, December 26, 1840).
But, one still needed to study and pass in Greek and Latin at Cambridge or Oxford if
one was to obtain a degree, and that meant that Latin and Greek continued to receive much
attention in all elite English public schools and academies. That said, because the University
of Cambridge required mathematics for an honours degree, many schools were forced to
reconsider their curricula. Some of the elite public schools tried to resist the sudden
emergence of mathematicsthus, for example, before the year 1836 there appears to have
been no mathematical teaching of any kind at Eton (Lyte, 1875, p. 436). In the end,
however, any resistance to the new order proved to be futile.
The almoners, with their new-found interest in mathematics, quickly realized that the
RMS program, with its emphasis on navigation and its tight requirement that graduates
immediately take up seven-year apprenticeships, was totally inappropriate to the needs of
Grammar School students. The almoners knew that they had to make sure that senior
Grammar School students learned significant mathematics beyond arithmetic before
proceeding to University studies. Therefore, the school had to restructure its curriculum so
that Grammar School students would study far more mathematics at school than ever before.
When, in the 1820s, the Tripos was modernized to take account of the work of
continental mathematicians, the greater public schools and Christs Hospital (the most
famous of the free boarding schoolsEducation Commission, 1861, p. 496), as well as
other high-level schools in England, felt an increasing need to offer sophisticated studies in
mathematics. According to a 2015 webpage of the University of Cambridges Faculty of
Mathematics (http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/about/history):
The [Tripos] examination lasted five and a half hours a day for eight days. Those
in the top class were (and still are) called Wranglers in an echo of the old system
of disputation. The candidates were listed in order of marks with the top candidate
being Senior Wrangler, the next Second Wrangler, and so on. In one list ... the
Senior Wrangler got more than 7,500 marks, the lowest Wrangler got about 1,500
marks and the lowest candidate to get honours (obtaining the wooden spoon) got
300 marks. Although the owner of the wooden spoon had 100 people above him,
he in turn outclassed 300 poll men who failed or, more usually, did not attempt
to obtain honours.
Thus, in 1865, in his evidence before the Taunton Royal Commission, the Reverend William
Webster, senior mathematical master at Christs Hospital since 1833, proudly told the Royal
Commissioners that he was a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Cambridge, and had been
twenty-ninth Wrangler. He also told the Royal Commissioners that a former Christs
Hospital student of his had achieved the position of second Wrangler, and that that student
had learned most of the mathematics he needed for the Tripos while still attending Christs
Hospital. Websters evidence before the Royal Commission is reproduced, in full, as
Appendix C to this book.
During the first half of the nineteenth century Christs Hospital moved to expand and
liberalize its forms of mathematics education in order that mathematics beyond arithmetic
would be taught to many more students than those in the Royal Mathematical School. Part of
this process saw RMS losing status within the school.
Arthur William Trollope, head of the Grammar School between 1799 to 1826, led the
movement to reduce the status of RMS within the school. Despite the fact that the charter of
Charles II had stipulated that RMS boys were to be lodged in a separate ward, this practice
was discontinued in 1820, on the grounds that the behavior of RMS boys had been, and
continued to be, so bad that it was an embarrassment to the school. Arthur William Trollope
pushed through legislation by which RMS boys no longer slept in the same dormitory, under
the supervision of a special nurseand thus, the RMS boys were scattered across the school
(Hale, 1855; Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834).
Rather than provide a detailed analysis of the history of RMS during the period 1800
1868, an analysis of what the Reverend William Webster told the Taunton Royal
Commission in 1865 about the Mathematical School at Christs Hospital will now be
presented. At that time, Webster was about to retire after having been head of the
Mathematical School for about 33 years. The analysis will introduce side headings, which
should help readers structure their thinking. The full transcript of Websters evidence before
the Royal Commission is reproduced as Appendix C to this book, and other complementary
evidence, in which details of the various mathematics courses offered at Christs Hospital in
the 1860s, are given in Appendix D. The tables in Appendix D were taken from Vol. VII of
the Schools Inquiry Commission (Great Britain, 1868a) report (usually called the Taunton
Commission Report) which was prepared for, and submitted to, Parliament.
William Websters Evidence Before the Taunton Royal Commission

The Taunton Schools Enquiry Commission was established in Great Britain in 1864
and reported to Parliament in December 1867 (Willson, 2004). It was chaired by Henry
Labouchere (Lord Taunton) (Hinchliff, 1998), and was one of three Royal Commissions
established between 1858 and 1864 for the purpose of inquiring into the various forms of
school education in Great Britain at that timethe first, the Newcastle Royal Commission,
was established in 1858 and reported in 1861 on the state of popular education (Great
Britain, 1861); the second, the Clarendon Royal Commission, was established in 1861 and
reported in 1864 on the so-called greater public schools, which included well-known elite
schools such as Eton, Charterhouse, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Westminster, and
Winchester (Maclure, 1973; Shrosbree, 1988); the third, the Taunton Royal Commission,
concerned itself with those schools which lay between the greater public schools covered
by the Clarendon Commission and the education of boys and girls of the labouring class
which had been dealt with by the Newcastle Commission. The Taunton commissioners
investigated 782 grammar schools and some proprietary and grammar schools (Curtis, 1963).
The stated purpose of the Taunton Commission was to survey the patchy, complicated
world of hundreds of endowed schools, grammar schools, and proprietary and private
schoolsschools which were the natural providers of education for the increasingly
numerous and demanding middle class (Willson, 2004, p. 183). One such school was
Christs Hospital, and the Taunton commissioners exhaustively reported on education
offerings at Christs Hospital. In order to be in a position to prepare its report, the
commissioners interviewed pertinent people (witnesses). One of those witnesses was the
William Webster before the Taunton Royal Commission 169
Reverend William Webster (18061870), who was head of the Mathematical School at
Christs Hospital between 1833 and 1866. The Taunton Commissions final extensive report
was presented to parliament on December 2nd, 1867.
Webster gave his evidence to the Taunton commissioners when they visited Christs
Hospital on June 28th, 1865. The commissioners asked him to respond verbally to a wide
range of questions, and the official typed transcript of the questions and his answers occupied
10 pages of small type in the Schools Inquiry Commissions (Great Britain, 1865) transcripts
of evidence. Websters evidence provides important commentary on what had happened
within RMS during the first 65 years of the nineteenth century. For much of the following
analysis we shall let William Websters own words speak for themselves. The spelling in the
transcript as reported here is the same as that to be found in the official transcripts.
Webster retired shortly after giving evidence before the Royal Commission, and was
succeeded, as head mathematical master, by the Reverend T. J. Potter, who had been
Websters second master.
William Webster, Head Mathematical Master at Christs Hospital

The four-digit numerals before questions have been retained from the official
Government record of statements made by persons who appeared before the Schools Inquiry
Commission (Great Britain, 1865).
8196. (Lord Taunton): I believe you are the head mathematical master of this institution?
Webster: I am.
8197. Are you a graduate of the University of Cambridge?
Webster: I am a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Cambridge. I was twenty-ninth
Wrangler.
8198. How long have you held this situation in connexion with this school?
Webster: I am in my thirty-ninth year of service.
8199. Always as a mathematical master?
Webster: Yes.
8200. And as head mathematical master?
Webster: No. The first seven years I was junior master, and then I was unanimously
elected head mathematical master.
8201. Have you the uncontrolled management of the mathematical studies?
Webster: Yes, entirely.
8202. Nobody interferes with you in that respect?
Webster: No one.
The Mathematical Department at Christs Hospital Under William Webster

Which boys studied mathematics at Christs Hospital in the 1860s?
The Grecians and Deputy Grecians in the Grammar School. The most senior boys in
the Grammar School in the 1860s were being prepared for university studies. They were
known as Deputy Grecians and Grecians and were being taught easily the highest level
of mathematics of any of the students attending Christs Hospital. Indeed, Websters answers
to Questions 8203 and 8204, below, revealed that he aimed to bring the Grecians to the point
where they already knew and understood what would normally be taught if and when they
attended the University of Cambridge.
8203. How far do you carry the boys in mathematics?

Webster: I have formerly carried them into their third-years subjects. My highest
Wranglers did with me almost the whole of their work here. I have had a second
Wrangler, and he read with me nearly to the end of his course. We take them to about
the end of the second years subjects. We are restricted in effect by the competitive
examinations which now take place in the universities, where they do not carry on their
examinations for scholarships beyond the second years subjects.
8204. Is every boy required to read mathematics?
Webster: Every boy in the school who is going to the university, and most of the others.
There are some few boys who never come into the Mathematical School.
Table 8.1 shows the program (including classics subjects, etc.) followed by the Deputy
Grecians and Grecians in 1866. The Table, as well as other tables in this chapter, are
reproduced from the Schools Inquiry Commissions final report (Great Britain, 1868a). A
note appended to the Table in the original report (p. 437) gave the list of books to be studied
by the Grecians and Deputy Grecians during the first half of 1866. The intended mathematics
curriculum for the Grecians and Deputy Grecians was qualitatively different, and more
advanced, than anything ever required of RMS boys who, by the 1850s, had come to be
regarded, by Webster, as not having much ability in mathematics.
In Questions 8279 through 8294, Webster was questioned, by Commissioner Dr
Frederick Temple, on the criteria by which students were selected to become Deputy Grecian
and Grecians. He was also asked to elaborate on the content of the mathematical studies
followed by the Deputy Grecians and the Grecians. At that time, Temple was headmaster of
Rugby School, and was a highly regarded educational reformer. Later, between 1896 and
1902, he would become Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest position within the Church of
England (Hinchliff, 1998).
8279. (Dr Temple) But the Deputy Grecians have become Deputy Grecians by their classics
alone?
Webster: Yes; only Dr Jacob [head of the Grammar School], if he thinks right (and
sometimes he does) will come and say, Now I am thinking of appointing these boys.
Have you any one who is particularly excellent in mathematics? He did so the other
day. He was going to appoint six Deputy Grecians. He selected the six, but before he
definitely decided he brought his list in to me, and asked me if I could point out any
one of a certain number who was particularly excellent in mathematics, for if so he
thought he might be taken on the Deputy Grecians class. I was nearly suggesting one
boy; but I had heard from my colleagues that he was likely to go into commercial life,
and therefore I thought it was quite as well for him to remain where he was. He was not
so good a mathematician that I should have pressed it on Dr Jacob as being the case of
one who was likely to be a genius in mathematics.
8280. What stage in mathematics have the Deputy Grecians generally reached?
Webster: I am going to have them examined next week. The highest subject of the
Deputy Grecians will be Drews Geometrical Conic Sections, and they will have the
whole course of trigonometry. I use Todhunters Trigonometry with them.
8281. Where have they learnt that?
Webster: They have learnt that with me.
William Websters Evidence Before the Taunton Royal Commission 171
Table 8.1
Day-by-Day Mathematics Classes for Grecians and Deputy Grecians Under the Rev. T. J.
Potter, M.A., Head Mathematical Master in 1866. (Great Britain, 1868a, p. 446)
DAYS HOURS A.M. HOURS P.M. EVENING
9 to 12 2 to 5
Monday (Deputy Grecians) (Deputy Grecians) Grecians prepare

book work for the
1. Analytic conics and Trigonometry Same as for the
following morning.
morning 9 to 12
2. Trigonometry and Conics
topics.
3. Trigonometry
4. Euclid, Books VI XI; Algebra
Tuesday (Grecians) (Deputy Grecians)
1. Conics, Differential Calculus 1. Analytical Conics
with Mr Bowker
2. Dynamics
2. Algebra
3. Analytical Conics
3. Algebra
4. Differential Calculus
4. Algebra
Deputy Grecians
Wednesday prepare book work.
As on Monday
Thursday As on Monday evening.
Friday As on Tuesday
Saturday 1. As on Monday 1. As on Monday As on Wednesday
evening.
2. Statics 2. Statics
3. As on Monday 3. As on Monday
4. Conics with Mr Bowker 4. Conics with Mr
Bowker
5. Conics with Mr Bowker
5. Conics with Mr
Bowker
Euclid; Potts. Algebra; Hall, Wood, Todhunter. Trigonometry; Besley, Todhunter.

Geometry, Conic Sections; Drew. Analytical Conic Sections; Todhunter, Salmon.
Differential Calculus; Hall, Todhunter, Mechanics; Parkinson, Walton (Problems)
8282. They have learnt that since they became Deputy Grecians?
Webster: Yes.
8283. What is the highest point that they attained on first becoming Deputy Grecians?
Webster: One of those boys who has just been made a Deputy Grecian has been
through the sixth book of Euclid. Still, I think it is better for him to join what we call
the second parting, and not the third, and there his Euclid for the first half year will be
four books. He has taken up all the books at once. In the Great and Little Erasmus they
take up portions. When they become Deputy Grecians they take up the whole.
8284. As soon as they become Deputy Grecians they are entitled to stay until 18, are they
not?
Webster: No; every boy must leave at 15, unless Dr Jacob and I agree to recommend
him for an additional year. He then can only stay till 16. Then by the time he is 16 we
have to recommend whether he shall be a probationer or not.
8285. Probationer for what?
Webster: We call the junior Grecians probationers.
8286. They may stay another year supposing they become Grecians?
Webster: We cannot keep more than 12, but may keep 12 probationers.
8287. How many of those 12 become Grecians?
Webster: At the end of a year they are reduced to eight by our recommendation.
8288. And those eight are the only ones that stay on till 18?
Webster: They stay an additional year, and at the end of the next year they are to be
reduced to five.
8289. (Lord Lyttelton) Then there cannot be more than five go in any one year to the
universities?
Webster: From the state of the funds an intimation has been given us that if we like to
keep six for the next year we can do it. If when we come to decide that question, we
think it desirable to keep six, we can do so. According to the rule of the school, five go
with exhibitions to the University.
8290. (Dr Temple) And only five?
Webster: Only five with exhibitions in any one year according to the existing rule.
8291. (Lord Lyttelton) As the practical effect, in no one year can more than five go to the
universities?
Webster: Not with our exhibitions, subject to the observations which I have just made.
8292. But are they allowed to stay long enough in the school to go direct to the universities?
Webster: If they are not chosen for that last year they must leave at the end of the
second year of their Grecianship.
8293. How old are they then?
Webster: They will be generally be about 18; between 17 and 18.
8294. How many are there who can stay until they are between 17 and 18?
Webster: Eight; 12, from 16 and 17; the probationer Grecians are 12 if we fill up the
number. Then they are reduced to 8 at the end of one year, and at the end of the second
year to 5; and those 5 take our exhibitions.
The naval boys. During the 1860s there were about 100 naval boys who studied the
RMS traditional mathematics/navigation course. Forty of these were Kings boys,
appointed under the original Royal Foundation agreement, and another 50 were funded
through the bequest from Samuel Travers. These naval boys were placed in classes referred
to as orders, with different orders being taught different topics, depending on how long the
students had been in the mathematics/navigation program (see Websters answers to
Questions 8205 and 8213, below; see, also, Table 8.2, which is from the Schools Inquiry
Commission (Great Britain, 1868a, p. 447). Answers to Questions 8301 and 8302 revealed
that all naval boys actually spent considerable time learning Latin.
Table 8.2
The Mathematical Studies of Naval Classes (Named Orders) at Christs Hospital During
the Quarter Commencing January 18, 1866 (Great Britain, 1868a, p. 447)
DAYS ORDER HOURS A.M. ORDER HOURS P.M.
Monday 1 910.30 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 25 Scripture History, Trig., &c
2 9 10.30 gation, Nautical As- 2 25 Scripture History, Trig., &c
3 910.30 tronomy 3 25 Scripture History, Trig., &c
8* 10.3012 Arithmetic 8* 25 Arithmetic
Tuesday 1 912 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 3.305 Trigonometry, Navi-
2 910.30 gation, Nautical As- 2 25 gation, Nautical As-
3 910.30 tronomy 3 25 tronomy
8* 911 Arithmetic 8* 23.30 Arithmetic
Wednesday 1 912 Trigonometry, Navi- 1
2 912 gation, Nautical As- 2
3 910.30 tronomy 3
8* 10.3012 Arithmetic 8*
Thursday 1 912 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 25 Trigonometry, Navi-
3 912 tronomy 3 25 tronomy
Friday 1 910.30 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 3.305 Arithmetic & Algebra
2 910.30 gation, Nautical As- 2 25 Arithmetic & Algebra
3 910.30 tronomy 3 25 Arithmetic & Algebra
8* 10.3012 Arithmetic 8* 23.30 Arithmetic
Saturday 1 912 Arithmetic and Algebra
2 910.30
3 912 Arithmetic and Algebra
8* 912 Arithmetic and Algebra
The first three orders prepare every evening a lesson in Trigonometry or Astronomy; the 8th order
work Arithmetic.
* The intermediate orders are instructed by the Rev. H. C. Bowker and Mr Carlos. The 8th order
attends in two divisions, one part in the morning and the other in the afternoon, by alternate weeks.
List of books, or portions of books, prepared to be studied by the above-named classes during the
quarter commencing January 18, 1868:
Arithmetic; Colensus; Algebra; Hall, Coleman; Trigonometry; Hall, Jeans (Part I). Outline of
Astronomy; Hall. Navigation and Nautical Astronomy; Riddle, Jeans, Inman; Scripture History; Watts.
In Table 8.2, most of the academic program for the naval boys is shown. Note that
except for the scripture history classes (which shared Monday afternoons with trigonometry),
and the Latin classes (not indicated in Table 8.2), every subject taken by RMS students was a
branch of mathematicsarithmetic, algebra, trigonometryor navigation, or astronomy.
The method of teaching the naval students relied heavily on the standard cyphering
approachthe authors own two navigation cyphering books prepared by RMS students
during the time William Webster was head of the Mathematical School.
Clearly, from answers Webster gave to Questions 8247 through 8250, he regarded his
naval boys as weak in mathematics. Answers to Questions 8228 through 8234 seemed to
indicate that there were as many as nine different classes of naval boysthese would mostly
have comprised Kings boys and students in the Samuel Travers Foundation classes.
8205. Who is it that decides which boys shall or shall not read mathematics?
Webster: We have five boys in this school, the sons of naval officers, who come into
the school on the express condition that they shall be educated for sea. As soon as those
boys come up from the Hertford School I see them, or at least I see them at the next
admission, and if they are at all qualified for admission into the school I take them.
Sometimes I find that they are totally disqualified, and I, in the exercise of my
judgment, do not then recommend to the committee that they shall come into the
Mathematical School; but I take in almost all. Then there are others that come, whose
parents with them, to be educated for sea, and if I find that they are sufficiently
qualified for the School, and that their age will admit of their going through the course,
I take them, their friends first entering into an undertaking that they shall go to sea.
8213. Is the teaching of arithmetic under your direction?
Webster: The arithmetic is taught in the Commercial School except to the boys in the
Naval School. I can take the boys into the Naval School very early; we want to get
them on as fast as we can. We have got a great deal to do, and I take them in provided I
see that they have fair ability. I give them a very simple examination in the simple rules
of arithmetic, and I see whether they have ability; and if they have, then they come in,
their parents having signed an undertaking that they shall go to sea.
...
8228. How many classes are there under your own charge?
Webster: I have some of the naval boys. We usually call the naval classes orders. The
first three orders or classes I have under my teaching; then the fourth order is under our
second master, and he takes the arithmetic at my particular desire. When we had our
last change, a new master coming, I knew the importance of arithmetic being well
taught, and I asked him, as a personal favour to me, if he would take the arithmetic of
the naval boys, because I knew how thoroughly it would be done, and a young comer
might not have done it so well. We talked it over together, and he, because I wished it,
continued to take the arithmetic, and we put the intermediate orders under our junior.
8229. You have three orders and this gentleman has the fourth?
Webster: Yes, and the arithmetic boys. Then there are the three orders under the third
master that come in at different times; he has not these orders all at once.
8230. But at separate times?
Webster: Yes; he has an order, and some of the boys of the Great and Little Erasmus.
8231. Are they not included in the orders?
Webster: No, the orders are the naval boys.
8232. The naval boys only?
Webster: The naval boys only.
8233. There are, I understand, seven orders?

Webster: Eight orders; and sometimes we make nine of them, because the boys in
arithmetic, whom we can regard in one sense as one order, we have now to break up
into two orders, for some are examined this time in the whole of arithmetic, and the
lower part only as far as vulgar fractions.
8234. Then there are these eight or nine orders, and there are also six classes?
Webster: Yes.
...
8247. At what stage are the boys when they first come to you in your lowest class or order?
What are they capable of doing?
Webster: Are you alluding to the Naval School?
8248: The lowest you have got to do with at all?
Webster; The lowest I have to do with at all are the naval boys, because they come into
our school to learn their arithmetic, and the others do not, only we give them once a
fortnight about an hour and a half to keep it up, and to give them a little finish, as from
them will be selected those who go to the university.
8249. Then the boys in the Naval School are at the very beginning?
Webster: I should refuse to take a boy if he did not know the multiplication table. My
instructions when I first began were that I was not to take any one in who could not do
the rule of three; but, however, I depart from that and take them lower down. I look to
see whether they are likely to be able to learn, if they know their tables, and can
multiply and divide with tolerable readiness; we do the rest in the Mathematical School,
if we find it not sooner done.
8250. They go to Hertford before coming to you?
Webster: Yes.
...
8301. (Dr Storrar) Do your naval boys learn classics at all?
Webster: Yes; they go in the classics school almost as much as the other boys. They
lose a little; I think they lose one lesson a week. They are not quite half their time in the
Grammar School. The general rule is that half the time shall be devoted to classics and
half to other subjects. That rule is departed from to a certain extent with respect to the
naval boys, to give them more time in the Mathematical School, but they learn with the
other classes, only they perhaps are not so likely to be promoted at the end of the half
year.
8302. Do you carry any boys far in mathematics who have learned very little or so classics?
Webster: Some naval boys, whilst doing very creditably in mathematics, make little
progress in classics.
Non-RMS boys and non-Grecians studying mathematics at Christs Hospital during
the time of William Webster. From an answer Webster gave to Question 8207, it seems that
there were about 200 boys studying mathematics beyond arithmetic at any time. Euclid,
algebra and trigonometry were taught in what was called the Junior Mathematical School.
Bright boys (Websters term) who successfully completed the study of Euclids Elements
were likely to be selected to become Deputy Grecians in the Grammar School. The
Grecians (senior Grammar School boys) and Deputy Grecians took nine hours of classes
each week in mathematics and, in addition to that, were expected to concentrate on
mathematics for two evenings a week. Websters answer to Question 8214 indicated that
other than RMS boys there were no students who mainly concentrated on mathematicsall
of the higher mathematical work of the school was done by Grammar School students.
8206. But take the case of those who have no special qualifications; who is it that determines
with regard to them whether mathematics shall or shall or shall not be taught, and how
far they shall go in them?
Webster: When they get to the Great Erasmus they necessarily learn mathematics.
8207. They are required to learn mathematics?
Webster: They are then required to learn mathematics, but that does not fill up our
number completely; we are required to have 100 to 120 in what we call the Junior
Mathematical Schoolthat is, as distinguished from the Naval School, and as
distinguished from the Grecians and Deputy Grecians.
8208. What is taught in the Junior Mathematical School?
Webster: Euclid and algebra, and we sometimes have trigonometry, but not often,
because from those boys the Deputy Grecians are selected, and they become Deputy
Grecians if they are bright boys before they have completed the Euclid which we
require them to go through.
8209. What is it that determines what portion of time shall be given to mathematical studies
in the case of those boys?
Webster: With respect to the Grecians and Deputy Grecians that was the subject many
years ago of friendly debate between myself and our late upper grammar master, Dr
Rice. Dr Rice proposed that I should have more time than I then had. I used to have two
half days a week; he himself suggested that I should have a third half day, on this
condition, that on the third half day they should not be required to prepare for me on the
previous nightthat the night should be devoted to exercises for him; that they should
come in on that third half day simply to work problems or examples; and that the
committee acceded to. Dr Rice thought that I had not quite enough time for what was
required at the university, and he himself suggested it to me.
8210. These things, then, are decided by the committee upon the representation of the
master?
Webster: They are so; that was done so.
8211. Do you apprehend that this system works smoothly in giving you a sufficient number
of hours to teach the boys mathematics in the way you think right?
Webster: Yes, I think so; it is nine hours a week.
8212. You are satisfied with that?
Webster: I am satisfied with that time. There are two evenings in the week when they
prepare work for me. The half day they do not prepare work for me, they come in and
work problems in whatever part of mathematics they may be, such as problems in
mechanics or the differential calculus. They do not prepare what we call book work on
the third day.
8214. Suppose a boy were to show a remarkable aptitude for mathematical studies, and some
inaptitude for classical studies, would there be any means under the system of this
school of enabling that boy to devote more time to mathematics and less to the classics?
Webster: This has never been done yet. Dr Jacob and I have sometimes debated that
question. I have now one very remarkable junior Grecian, who I am sure is made of the
stuff of which senior Wranglers are made. He does not do so brilliantly in the Grammar
School as in the Mathematical School. Dr Jacob and I have sometimes talked it over,
whether we could meet cases of that kind. That boy comes in the same as the rest, only
that Dr Jacob, I believe, is more lenient to him with respect to his classical exercises, as
I am more lenient to some who are doing well with Dr Jacob who do not display a
particular taste for mathematics; still, we do not alter the time.
8215. Would it be in the power of Dr Jacob and yourself, if you agreed upon the point, to
alter the distribution of time with regard to those studies in the case of any particular
boy whom you may jointly be of opinion would profit by such alteration?
Webster: I am quite sure that if we came to the committee with such a case the
committee would immediately sanction what we suggested.
8216. Practically you have never done so?
Webster: No.
8217. Will you allow me to ask you why you have not done so? You have already stated that
there is one case; clearly it would be desirable that some such course should be
adopted?
Webster: We have talked the matter over, but never in such a way that we have come to
the conclusion that we ought to bring it before the committee.
Mathematics taught to students in the Junior Mathematical School at Christs

Hospital. In the 1860s mathematics beyond arithmetic was taught to all Christs Hospital
students in the so-called Great Erasmuscomprising the Grecians and the Deputy
Greciansand to the naval boys, and these were all considered to be in the Mathematical
School. In addition, there was a Junior Mathematical School, which comprised Little
Erasmus studentsyounger students in the Upper Grammar School, as well as students in
the Latin (or Lower Grammar) school. There were also many boys studying arithmeticin
particular, all boys in the Commercial School prepared cyphering books, which usually went
as far as the rule of three (see Table 8.3, to which is added a list of textbooks on which the
courses were based).
The structure was made clear in Websters responses to the following questions asked
by Royal Commissioner Dr Frederick Templethe headmaster of Rugby School.
8218. (Dr Temple). Can you describe how this Mathematical School is organized? It
contains, you say, 50 naval boys, and I think all who are above the Little Erasmus?
Webster: Yes; and some of the Little Erasmus also. The order of the committee is that
we shall have, in what we call the Junior Mathematical School, from 100 to 120 boys.
8219. And you fill up this Junior Mathematical School from the Little Erasmus?
Webster: From the Little Erasmus, and a few boys from the Latin School.
8220. How do you pick them?
Webster: By communicating with the commercial master, who knows what they do in
arithmetic. We take the best boys after communicating with him. If we thought it right,
we should examine them; there would be no objection to our examining them if we
thought it right. We can depend on his judgment; he is sure to tell us who are the best
boys in arithmetic, and it is from those boys in the Little Erasmus and some from the
Latin school that we fill up our number to the required 100 or 120.
8221. Do the boys from the Little Erasmus go to the Commercial School to learn arithmetic
generally?
Webster: Yes, they do, unless they come to us. I was asked whether we taught
arithmetic; we do not professedly teach arithmetic to those boys, but all in the Junior
Mathematical School once a fortnight give an hour and a half to arithmetic.
Table 8.3
Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Classes or Forms Named Lower Mathematical
School (at Christs Hospital), Under the Rev. H. C. Bowker, B.A., Second Mathematical
Master, During the Quarter Commencing January 18, 1866 (Great Britain, 1868a, p. 449)
HOURS A.M. HOURS P.M.

DAYS SECTION SECTION
910.30 10.3012 23.30 3.305
Division 1 Division 2
A lesson in Euclid is prepared in the evening

Monday A, classes Euclid Algebra A
i, ii
Tuesday B Euclid Algebra B Euclid Algebra
Wednesday A Euclid Algebra
Thursday B Euclid Algebra A Euclid Algebra
Friday A Euclid Algebra B Euclid Algebra
Saturday B Euclid Algebra
A lesson in Euclid is prepared overnight.

List of books, or portions of books, proposed to be studied by the above-named classes during the half
year commencing January 18, 1866:
Div. I and II, Section A, Class iEuclid vi; Algebra; Potts Euclid, ed. 1864
Div. I, Section A, Class iiEuclid i, 2748; algebra to quadratic equations
Div. I, Section BEuclid i, 126; algebra to evolution
Div, II, Section AEuclid i, 2741; ii; algebra to quadratic equations
Div, II, Section BEuclid i, 126; algebra to evolution
Potts Euclid, ed. 1863; Halls Algebra; Colensos Algebra, Part I, ed. 1862; Colensos Arithmetic.
The growth and control of the Junior Mathematical School. Websters answers to
Questions 8295 through 8300 revealed that the major area of growth so far as mathematical
education at Christs Hospital was concerned was in the Junior Mathematical School.
8295. (Dr Temple) It appears that you have the freest consultations with your colleagues in
the Mathematical School, but that as far as the arrangement of all the times which are
devoted to subjects is concerned you are subject to a system which was made a good
while ago, before Dr Jacob came to the school?
Webster: Dr Jacob and I have, I think, debated the question. We are not perpetually
changing in such matters, nor thinking of change.
8296. Not only so, but you have not changed at all since Dr Jacob came here?
Webster: Not with respect to the time devoted to mathematics by the Grecians and
Deputy Grecians. We have had the mathematical instruction extended and more taught.
We have had the system altered with respect to what we call the Junior Mathematical
School.
8297. How was that altered?
Webster: It was altered by general consultation and a submission to the committee. As
to who was particularly responsible for it, I cannot say. I was consulted by a good many
of the masters. We had a general consultation then. It was at a time when, from a very
unfortunate occurrence, Dr Jacob was not so friendly with us as we ought always to
have been. Whether it was our fault, or Dr Jacobs, I do not wish to discuss, but it was a
fact that we were not on those terms that we ought to have been, and on which I think
we now are.
8298. Then this alteration was suggested by the masters?
Webster: To a great extent. I think it was more suggested by the masters than anyone
else.
8299. The masters brought up a new scheme and submitted it to the committee?
Webster: I really do not recollect how it was done. There was a consultation. I was
asked my opinion with respect to the mathematics, and I gave my opinion.
8300. Who asked your opinion?
Webster: There were a great many masters consulted together; I should think I talked
the matter over with Dr Jacob, although we were not then on those terms that I would
have liked.
William Websters organization of his Mathematical School.
8222. How is this Mathematical School organized? How many classes are there?
Webster: The classes vary in number. The Great Erasmus comes as a matter of course;
but many of the boys have already attended the school; and, in fact, the 100 or 120 boys
of whom the School consists are in such various degrees of progress, that we are
compelled to break them up into many classes. Sometimes we have one number of
classes and sometimes another.
8223. How many classes have you at this moment?
Webster: In one respect we have six, but then they are broken up into divisions.
8224. There are six classes broken up into subdivisions?
Webster: Yes.
8225. How many masters have you to teach those six classes?
Webster: They are taught by two masters.
8226. Those two masters teach the six classes?
Webster: Yes, but the classes are not all in at the same time.
8227. This does not include the boys under your own charge?
Webster: No.
...
8235. Besides that, there are boys under your own charge?
Webster: Besides the first three orders I have the Grecians and Deputy Grecians,
chiefly. The other masters also take part with me in teaching the Grecians and Deputy
Grecians; that is, my second master does so with both, and the third master with the
Deputy Grecians.
8236. The part that principally belongs to you is included in the class called the Grecians and
Deputy Grecians?
Webster: Yes, and the first three orders. The Deputy Grecians, those that are coming up
for the first half year, are not under me; they are under my junior; he has one class of
Deputy Grecians, the lowest; then, my second master has the next class; then in the
third half year, if they are moved up, they come to me. At the present time I have three
classes of Deputy Grecians under my teaching; we call them partings; there are
practically five classes, the lowest parting is under the junior master; the next is under
the second master, and the other three are under myself. At the same time that they
have their partings of Deputy Grecians, they have some of the Great and Little
Erasmus, and some of the orders.
8237. These orders and partings of the Deputy Grecians and some part of the Great and Little
Erasmus, are all together in the school at one moment?
Webster: They are all in the school at the same time and working, and some of course,
are round the master,
8238. Who determines whether a boy is to be promoted from one order to another, from one
class to another class, or from one parting to another parting?
Webster: Myself.
8239. Alone?
Webster: I look at the manner of their passing the examination, I look at the marks they
get, and I listen to what my colleagues say; but I am responsible.
8240. You are responsible, but it is decided by consultation with the other masters?
Webster: Yes. One half year I examine myself, and that examination is a great guide to
me, but I never decide without consulting the other masters.
8241. Who decides what work is to be done in each class?
Webster: The responsibility rests with me. I consult with my juniors, but the
responsibility rests with me.
8242. There is no necessity for your referring anything of that sort to the committee?
Webster: I never do. I never have done so since I have been here, and I have never been
asked to do so.
8243. When you break up the Mathematical School into so many small divisions, does that
imply that they do not get the full time assigned to mathematics?
Webster: They all have their full time; it is nine hours a week for the Grecians and
Deputy Grecians, and seven hours and a half a week for those in the Junior School who
are promoted in the Grammar School, without regard to the Mathematical School.
Some of the Deputy Grecians are often found fit to join the second parting. I have now
been consulting my colleagues about those whom Dr Jacob has just made Deputy
Grecians. There is the examination; I shall see the marks they get on examination,
returned by the examiner, Professor Hall of Kings College, and until the returns are
made nothing will be positively decided with respect to which parting boys may join.
I am guided very much by the opinion of those who have had the experience of teaching
them. I have great reason to depend on the judgment of my second master, who is one
of the most valuable men that ever entered a school.
8244. Are we to understand that every boy is instructed in mathematics for the full time
assigned to mathematics?
Webster: Yes, according to the time allocated to his class.
8245. Then the boys learn their mathematics in school, I presume?
Webster: They learn some out of school.

8246. All the time assigned to mathematics in school is passed in school learning or saying
mathematics?
Webster: Yes, or working examples. Of course, Euclid is studied and explained, and
algebra is explained, and some work round the masters desk takes place, and a great
deal is done where the boys sit.
...
8269. (Dr Temple) Those who come into the Naval School come at the lowest point to you,
but in the case of those who come from the Little Erasmus, and whom you select in
fact, what is the stage at which they have arrived when they come to you?
Webster: They have gone through their arithmetic.
8270. Have they begun algebra at all?
Webster: No; they do not begin algebra in the Commercial School.
8271. Then I suppose they can work decimal fractions?
Webster: Decimal and vulgar fractions, and the square and cube root. They have gone
through their arithmetic.
8272. You consider them in such a state that they can begin algebra?
Webster: Decidedly. They do begin it the very first day they come in.
8273. Have they learnt no Euclid before they come to you?
Webster: They begin Euclid and algebra together. We divide the time between Euclid
and algebra.
8274. How long, as a general rule, do they stay with you?
Webster; It will depend on the age when they come in.
8275. I mean the average?
Webster: I have some difficulty in answering that question. Some come in between 12
and 13. Of course they have got to remain till 15 in some class or another. Some come
in at 13 and some later. If you were to ask me the average, I should say perhaps they
learn mathematics for a year and a half, as near as I can say.
8276. What do you find that you can bring them to in a year and a half, generally?
Webster: The first half year we generally go as far as surds in algebra, and some quick
boys will do a book in Euclid, but more frequently, perhaps, half a book.
8277. But in a year and a half, how much will they have done?
Webster: Perhaps three, and sometimes four books of Euclid. We have some boys who
are not yet 15, and were examined this time in the sixth and eleventh books of Euclid,
and in algebra to progressions. The second class were examined in the sixth book of
Euclid, and in algebra to quadratic equations.
8278. You have not any of these boys in trigonometry?
Webster: No. The quicker boys have become Deputy Grecians. We have boys under 15
learning trigonometry as Deputy Grecians.
Websters classification of dunces in his Mathematical School. A branch of

Christs Hospital based at Hertford served as a preparatory school for Christs Hospital in
London. Not all of the boys entering the London school had come from Hertford, and
Webster made it clear, in his answers to Questions 8251 through 8263, that, from a
mathematical perspective, he regarded the boys coming from Hertford as dunces.
8251. (Dr Temple) In what state do you find that they come to you from Hertford; are they
properly prepared?
Webster: Boys sometimes come up as dunces, and not on account of their progress
having reached the age limited for the Hertford School. I have had cases where boys
really could not be taught, but, as a general rule, they do know their tables, and can do
the first simple rules of arithmetic.
8252. Are they fairly prepared in proportion to their ages?
Webster: I should think they are generally.
8253. They know as much as they ought to know for their age?
Webster: When they come as young boys. The others are dunces.
8254. In fact when they do not know so much, is it really the boys own fault?
Webster: I think it is to a great extent.
8255. Is that at about the age of nine generally?
Webster: No, I take them in from 10 to 11, and sometimes at eleven and a half.
8256. Do you find that boys between 10 and 11 are not able to do a common rule of three
sum?
Webster: They will not do it readily; they profess to know how to do it, but give them a
rather trying example and they will go wrong in it.
8257. (Lord Taunton) Do you find a sufficient time is given at the Hertford School to the
study of arithmetic?
Webster: I do not know what time is given to it.
8258. Is there no communication at all between you and those who teach arithmetic at the
Hertford School upon those subjects?
Webster: No, because they are not prepared for the Mathematical School at Hertford;
the boys go from there to the Commercial School, and the connection is between them
and the Commercial School.
8259. Do you believe there is any communication between the Commercial School and the
teaching at Hertford?
Webster: I never put the question and I do not know. I presume they receive a list when
the boys come up, in which it is stated what each boy has been doing at Hertford.
8260. (Mr Acland) Do I understand that the naval boys do not come to you straight from
Hertford?
Webster; No, they go to the Commercial School before I take them.
8261. (Dr Temple) Do they stay any time in the Commercial School?
Webster: If they are fit for me, I take them. I look at their age and whether they can do
those rules in a respectable manner.
8262. (Lord Taunton) Who judges of the fitness of the boys who come into your School?
Webster: I do that entirely. I give them an examination, with the help of Mr Potter, my
second master, in whom I have the greatest confidence. I conduct an examination of
those boys, and then we come to the conclusion which of them are qualified, and which
are not.
8263. You are in friendly communication with him as to those boys?
Webster; Yes, I often ask him, Will you set these boys some examples? and then I
look at what they have done.
RMSs Implemented and Received Curricula 18001868 183
Does education in the classics assist mathematics learning?

8303. (Dr Storrar) My object is to ascertain from you, if possible, whether you consider that
classical studies are of service in preparing the intellect of a boy for mathematical
studies?
Webster: I certainly think they are. I like the combination of the two for all boys. I think
you would not bring out a boys mind if you were to let him devote all his time
exclusively to mathematics. I should not like it at all. It is only in the last year and a
half that the first three orders leave the Grammar School, and they learn French; but
they cease to learn Greek and Latin. I should be very sorry indeed to have the naval
boys altogether give up their classics.
8304. My question rather went to this, not as to whether you would wish boys to give up
classics in order to prosecute mathematics, but whether you thought for the purposes of
mathematical study it was an advantage for boys to have some previous training in
classics?
Webster: I think it is so for all boys. I should be exceedingly sorry to see classics
dropped. I should think the boy would be very defectively taught indeed, and that he
would not do his mathematics so well. With reference to the naval boys, I said they
learn French; I should have added that they learn drawing in common with a large
number of other boys, and chart-drawing in connexion with their intended going to sea.
8305. (Mr Acland) Under whose superintendence?
Webster: Under that of the drawing master,
8306. Not under your superintendence?
Webster: Not under my own superintendence. Chart-drawing is of great value to these
boys.
RMSs Implemented and Received Curricula 18001868

In his evidence before the Taunton Royal Commission the Reverend William Webster
made it clear that, so far as he was concerned, most of the naval boys whom he taught were
towards the bottom of the pile so far as aptitude towards mathematics was concerned. As
head of the Mathematical School, Webster did whatever he felt needed to be done in order to
identify very capable young mathematical students who might proceed to the University of
Cambridge and do well on the Tripos examination. Towards that end, he taught second- or
third-year university mathematics to the Grecians. The achievement of which he was most
proud was that he had taught a Christs Hospital Grecian to the point where he was able to
become second Wrangler (after three years at the University of Cambridge). Websters
perspective on school mathematics might be described as mathematics for the minority
(Clements, 1992); he saw his principal task as sifting out the mathematical wheat from the
chaff as quickly as possible, so that his Mathematical School could give due attention to the
minority who were mathematically precocious.
The overtly elitist policy towards mathematics education adopted at Christs Hospital
during Websters period as head of the Mathematical School saw most of the naval students
being regarded as mathematical dunces. But, in fact, the naval boys were rarely dunces
most of them were from poor families and, in their final years at Christs Hospital they had to
endure an RMS curriculum which incorporated mathematical topics that they were not ready
to learn. Figure 8.1 reproduces page 352 from the navigation cyphering book that Henry
Josiah Calkin Andrew (18201900) prepared at Christs Hospital in 1836. Andrew, who had
been admitted to the school when he was eight years old, was the son of the deceased
Lieutenant George Andrew, and in that sense seamanship was in his blood.
Like other mathemats, H. J. C.as he always called himselfcopied the mathematics
that was defined by the RMS curriculum on to pages that would form his cyphering book, in
his best handwriting and with his best efforts at calligraphy and illustration. Unlike the
situation with some other mathemats, a careful examination of H. J. C.s cyphering book
suggests that he was not merely copying, but was trying to understand what he entered in his
book. After cramming into his memory the material for which he thought he was likely to be
tested by Trinity House examiners, he managed to be approved as qualified for sea service.
Then, almost certainly, he took his cyphering book with him and often consulted it during his
long sea-faring career.
H. J. C. Andrews navigation cyphering book is currently owned by the authors of this
book. Over the years, its leather covers were separated from the original bound volume
which is unusual for cyphering books prepared by RMS students because Christs Hospital
made sure that its RMS students cyphering books were handsomely and solidly bound.
H. J. C.s cyphering book is well worn, suggesting that it was frequently consulted.
School records indicate that, on graduating from RMS, H. J. C. was apprenticed to
Commander James Petrie, on the Slains Castle, bound for Bombay. Our investigations have
revealed that he would become Captain H. J. C. Andrew, one of the most distinguished naval
officers in New Zealands history. He was elected Honorary Life Member of the New
Zealand Shipmasters Association, and captained a large number of voyages to Asia/Pacific
destinations (Our Shipmasters, 1900; Personal Items, 1897). He retained his passion for the
sea, and became an outstanding seaman, largely operating in the Southern Hemisphere from
a base in Auckland, New Zealand. He was among many RMS graduates quietly to make a
mark on the world. John Septimus Roe provides another example of a mathemat who would
leave his mark on the world (Jones, 2011). According to George Allan and Jack Morpurgo
(1984), RMS graduates played leading roles in the Maritime Service of the East India
Company and in numerous other major ventures in British colonies.
There is a sense in which H. J. C. Andrews received curriculum, derived from his
years in RMS, was something quite different from the smattering of mathematical and
navigational understandings that he would have dragged out of his short-term memory in
order to convince his Trinity House examiners that he was ready to go to sea. His RMS
training would have been complemented by the practical aspects of seamanship that he
experienced throughout his seven-year apprenticeship. That is to say, the mathematical
training he had received within RMS would have been given meaning as he worked on the
Slains Castle during the long journey to Bombay; he would probably have consulted his
cyphering book when preparing a log of the voyage. He would also have practised using the
navigational equipment that he had been taught to use at Christs Hospital.
Figure 8.1. Page 352, on double altitude calculations using logarithms, in H. J. C. Andrews
(1836) navigation cyphering book. It is currently owned by N. F. Ellerton and M. A.
Clements.
It is hard to imagine that, anywhere in the world, at that time, there were 16-year-olds
better prepared to take up sea-faring apprenticeships than RMS graduates. Most of these
graduates had elected to join RMS because, early in their lives, they had consciously elected
to become sailors. Almost all of them had worked diligently on their RMS studies, despite
being confronted, almost daily, with mathematical material that, at best, they struggled to
understand. They were usually from common stock, but as a composite whole they would
play an important role in allowing Great Britain subsequently to claim that Britannias
sailors ruled the waves (Mahan, 1898).
Of the navigation cyphering books originally prepared by RMS boys at Christs
Hospital 54 are known to exist todaythe oldest is held in the Bodleian Libraries at the
University of Oxford, and was prepared in 1718 by James Batterton, during James
Hodgsons time as RMS master (further details are provided in Chapter 5 of this book). The
youngest was prepared by Richard Murdoch Robertson in 1857 and 1858 (Jones, 2015) The
authors own three of those manuscriptsone was prepared by Charles Page in 18251826,
another by Henry Josiah Calkin Andrew in 18351836, and the third by Richard Murdoch
Robertson in 18571858. Elsewhere, we have written a lengthy chapter on Charles Pages
(1826) stunningly beautiful manuscript (see Ellerton & Clements, 2014, pp. 255297). Figure
8.2 reproduces a page from Richard Murdoch Robertsons cyphering book.
Although the problems solved by H. J. C. Andrew and Richard Murdoch Robertson in
Figures 8.1 and 8.2 were not identical, they were structurally very similar. The RMS
curriculum remained basically the same over the years, and comparing Robertsons
cyphering book with Andrews revealed that the same topics were covered in the same order.
Furthermore, the topics and the order in which those topics were studied were also the same
in the 18241825 cyphering book prepared by Charles Page (Ellerton & Clements, 2014).
Our analyses of the three Christs Hospital cyphering books that we now own (those
prepared by Page, Andrew, and Robertson) indicated that the RMS boys spent a lot of class
time, and evening study time, copying set texts neatly into their cyphering books. Our
impression was that H. J. C. Andrew understood much of what he copied, Charles Page
understood some of what he copied, and Richard Robertson understood very little of what he
copied. But, of course, whether that was indeed the case can never be proven.
Whatever the levels of understanding of the RMS boys, Samuel Pepys would have been
proud of what many of them were able to achieve in their later lives. By contrast, although
Reverend William Webster was proud of the subsequent mathematical achievements of some
of his Grecians who proceeded from the Grammar School to study mathematics at the
University of Cambridge, his evidence before the Taunton commissioners suggested that he
was not proud of his navy boys. From Websters perspective, RMS was merely a quirk of
history, and the mathemats were a body of average students who boosted the numbers in his
Mathematical Department. He had to teach them, but they would never be Wranglers.
By the mid-1850s Christs Hospital was being called a public school, which in
England was an appellation given to schools like Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby,
Shrewsbury, Winchester, and Westminster. Unlike Christs Hospital, though, those last-
named schools were largely the preserve of children of the rich (Hale 1855). In most of the
public schools, Latin and Greek were the primary focus of attention (see, e.g., A Carthusian,
1847), and in Christs Hospital that was also the case. Indeed, the Taunton Royal
Commission reported that virtually all of the 775 boys attending the London campus of the
School took Latin and 660 took Greek as well (Seaman, 1977). Of course, the Grammar
School boys studied mathematics beyond arithmetic in case they were able to go on to
university study. The Grecians were taught a rigorous curriculum in pure and applied
mathematics. However, despite Websters statement to the contrary, by the 1860s RMS boys
did not learn much Latin or Greek (see evidence of W. Gilpin, Christs Hospital Treasurer,
before the Taunton Royal Commission, especially Questions 80208022 (Great Britain,
1868b, p. 765)).
Figure 8.2. Page 517, on double altitude calculations using logarithms, in Richard Murdoch
Robertsons (1858) navigation cyphering book, which was prepared at Christs Hospital. It is
currently owned by N. F. Ellerton and M. A. Clements.
William Webster saw the RMS naval boys as a group destined for mere sea service.
He certainly did not think of them as important students in his Mathematical School. Webster
gained his greatest pleasure from teaching the Grecians, and from individually tutoring the
occasional very brilliant boy who might subsequently become a Wrangler.
Christs Hospital is a Thing Without Parallel in the Country

As mentioned earlier in this Chapter, in 1837 the President and governors of Christs
Hospital managed to obtain agreement that the stipulations associated with previously
agreed-upon scholarships should be modified so that each year Christs Hospital could send
three exhibitioners to the University of Cambridge and one to the University of Oxford. Each
exhibition could be held for four years and would be worth 100 pounds per year at Oxford
and 80 pounds per year at Cambridge (Potts, 1855). In the 1860s the number of Christs
Hospital scholarships to the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge had grown
to five, and according to Seaman (1977), the education of all was directed to and sacrificed
for the production of five yearly scholars (p. 54).
Historical perspective makes it clear that the nature of the educational institution named
Christs Hospital had changed from the days of Samuel Pepys and James Hodgson, and
that the new state of affairs was no longer aimed at catering for the needs of poor children.
The rhetoric of teaching poor boys was still to be found in the schools pronouncements but,
as David Bartlett (1852) wrote, only those boys can enter it now who have friends and
considerable money, for it is looked upon as a fine berth for a boy (p. 46). Bartlett added:
We forget the amount which is generally paid to secure a situation in it, but it is enough to
keep out all literally poor boys (p. 46). And, once a very capable boy gained admission into
the school there was a reasonable chance, whether he was from a rich family or from a poor
family, that he would finish up at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford,
and that the fees associated with attendance at those elite institutions would be paid through a
scholarship or an exhibition. At Christs Hospital he would study classics and mathematics
while being part of the Grammar School, and at the university there was a good chance he
would continue his studies in both classics and mathematics.
An observer with a sense of history might have recognized that with the march of time
the original purpose of the Christs Hospital school had been compromised. At reunions of
old-Blues, often called public suppers, there were many former Grammar School boys
present but rarely any who had ever worn the badge of the Royal Mathematical School (To
Mathemats, 1895). The reason was, of course, that many RMS boys had died in service, and
most of those who remained were in active service but scattered around the world. Although
the mathemats had had the privilege of an education in mathematics and navigation at the
Blue-Coat School, they had not proceeded to the University of Cambridge or to the
University of Oxford on scholarships, or exhibitions, and were therefore much less likely to
be on the lists of the most auspicious graduates of the School (A Record of Our Past, 1895;
Blanch, 1877; University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics, 2015).
Mr D. R. Fearon, Her Majestys Inspector of Schools for the London metropolitan area
and an Assistant Royal Commissioner, bravely reported to the Commission that the emphasis
on Latin and Greek at Christs Hospital was not consistent with commonsense and
enlightenment (Seaman, 1977, p. 56). Fearon was concerned that there was not enough
space at the Christs Hospital London campus to enable the boys to engage in games like
cricket, and he recommended that the campus be sold, and a new Christs Hospital be
established in a rural setting. The Taunton Royal Commission rejected Mr Fearons advice,
and the justification for its decision was destined to be much quoted. The relevant passage in
the lengthy section on Christs Hospital in its Final Report (Great Britain, 1868a) stated:
Some consideration seems to be justly due to the past history of so remarkable a
school, and to the attachment which it has inspired in the hearts of many of its
scholars. Christs Hospital is a thing without parallel in the country and sui
generis. It is a grand relic of the medieval spirit: a monument of the profuse
munificence of that spirit and of that constant stream of individual beneficence
which is so often found around institutions of that character. It has kept up its main
features, its traditions, its antique ceremonies almost unchanged for upwards of
three centuries. It has a long and goodly list of worthies. It is quite as strong as
Eton or Winchester in the affection of those who have been brought up in the
school. And, whatever educational faults there may be in it, that affection is at
least well earned by the admirable care and unstinted liberality bestowed on the
nurture of the children. (pp. 476477)
The Royal Commissioners admitted to having relied on Trollopes (1834) history of Christs
Hospital for their understanding of the history of the school and so it is not surprising that
they did not seem to be aware of the past greatness of the Royal Mathematical School. Their
extensive commentary on Christs Hospital made it clear that by the 1860s the school was
thought, by many, to be a greater public school for the poor. It adopted a curriculum that
was consistent with the idea that all of its boys should study Latin and most of them should
study Greek. So far as mathematics was concerned, the Grecians and Deputy Grecians, a
small minority of the student population, were taught a rigorous mathematics curriculum in
case they were able to proceed to university study (City of London, 1840; Historical and
Descriptive Notice of Christs Hospital, 1840, December 26th). The other boys should learn
arithmetic in the Writing School, and then proceed in the study of mathematics beyond
arithmetic as far as the school would allow them to proceed.
References
A Carthusian. (1847). Chronicles of charter-house. London, UK: George Bell.
A Record of Our Past. (1895). In Some more gleanings from The Blue (pp. 135141).
London, UK. Christs Hospital.
Allan, G. A. T., & Morpurgo, J. E. (1984), Christs Hospital. London, UK: Town & Country
Books.
Bartlett, D. W. (1852). London by day and night. New York, NY: Hurst and Co.
history of the foundation. London, UK: E. W. Allen.
Christs Hospital (16731865). Committee of Almoners, minutes. Volumes of handwritten
manuscript (held in the London Metropolitan Archives).

Clements, M. A. (1992). Mathematics for the minority: Some historical perspectives on
school mathematics in Victoria. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University.
Craik, A. D. D. (2007). Mr Hopkins men. London, UK: Springer.
Curtis, S. J. (1963). History of education in Great Britain (5th ed.). London, UK: University
Tutorial Press.
Education Commission. (1861). Report of the commissioners appointed to inquire into the
state of popular education in England. London, UK: George E. Eyre and William
Spottiswoode.
Freeman, F. N. (1913). Writing. In P. Monroe (Ed.). A cyclopedia of education (Vol. 5, pp.
Great Britain. (1861). The Royal Commission on the State of Popular Education in England
[Newcastle Commission], Parliamentary Papers, 1861, XXI.
Great Britain. (1865). Schools Inquiry Commission: Minutes of evidence taken before the
commissioners, Part I: Presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her
Majesty. London, UK: George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode.
Great Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission: Reports of the commissioners presented
to both Houses of Parliament of Her Majesty (Vol. XIII, Part I). London, UK: George
E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode.
Great Britain. (1868b). Schools Inquiry Commission: Minutes of evidence taken before the
Commissioners, (Vol. IV, Part I). London, UK: George E. Eyre and William
Spottiswoode.
Hinchliff, P. B. (1998). Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury: A life. Oxford, UK:
Clarendon.
Historical and Descriptive Notice of Christs Hospital (1840, December 26). The Saturday
Magazine, 17(544), 13.
Jones, C. (2011). Christs Hospital heritage: Customs and traditions. Horsham, UK: Christs
Hospital.
Lyte, H. C. M. (1875). A history of Eton College 14401884. London, UK: Macmillan and
Co.
Our Shipmasters. (1900, November 22). Evening Post (Auckland, New Zealand), 2.
Personal Items. (1897, July 20). New Zealand Herald, 6.
Roach, J. (1971). Public examinations in England 18501900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Seaman, C. M. E. (1977). Christs Hospital: The last years in London. London, UK: Ian
Allan.
Shrosbree, C. (1988). Public schools and private education: The Clarendon Commission,
186164, and the public schools act. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Stedall, J. (2008). Mathematics emergingA sourcebook 15401900. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
To Mathemats. (1895). In Some more gleanings from The Blue (pp. 131134). London,
UK. Christs Hospital.
Pickering.
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Mathematics. (2015). The history of mathematics in
Cambridge. http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/about/history.
Willis, R. (2013). Testing times: A history of vocational civil service and secondary
examinations in England since 1750. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Willson, F. M. G. (2004). The University of London, 18581900: The politics of Senate and
Convocation. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press.
Chapter 9
An Appropriate Theoretical Lens: Lag Time
Abstract: Lag time is defined as the amount of time between when a mathematical
development (such as Newtons fluxions) was first made known and when that development
came to be normally studied as part of the implemented mathematics curriculum in
schools. In preparing this book we identified and analyzed pertinent archival and other data
and then recognized that our interpretations of those data were consistent with lag-time
theory. From the beginning of RMS, in 1673, logarithms and trigonometry were incorporated
into the RMS curriculum, at a time when school children, elsewhere, were rarely expected
to grapple with such topics. Edward Paget (in 1694) and Humfrey Ditton (in 1709) attempted
to introduce sophisticated algebraic principles into the RMS curriculum, and in 1694
Isaac Newton attempted to persuade Christs Hospital authorities to include the theory of
mechanics. James Hodgson, in his 1723 textbook which was especially designed for the
RMS program, made use of fluxions, which had only been made known, by Isaac Newton, in
1693. We conclude that anyone proposing to introduce topics based on recent mathematical
developments into school mathematical curricula needs to take into account not only existing
school cultures but also whether prospective learners will be cognitively ready to learn the
new ideas.
Keywords: Christs Hospital, Curriculum theory, Edward Paget, Fluxions, Historiography,

History of school mathematics, Humfrey Ditton, Implemented curriculum, Intended
curriculum, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, Lag time, Logarithms, Mechanics, Royal
Mathematical School, Trigonometry
A New Era in School Mathematics
The creation of the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital in 1673 meant that
for the first time in a large school a program was established whereby 12- to 16-year-old
school children would be asked not only to study significant mathematics beyond elementary
arithmetic but also, simultaneously, to learn how that mathematics could be applied in
practical contexts. Having persuaded relevant government officials to agree to the creation of
RMS, Christs Hospital officials were then forced to develop an appropriate academic
program and to appoint suitably qualified persons to teach that program. A new era in school
mathematics had arrived, but that era would have its teething problems.
The first issue which had to be faced was which students should be enrolled in the new
program. From the beginning it was decided that all the students would be boysbut who
should those boys be? One possibility was that the most academically capable boys from
anywhere in England should be foundbecause, after all, the purpose of creating RMS was
to enrich the intellectual knowledge and practical performances of future personnel in the
Royal Navy. But, Christs Hospital was a school for the poor, located within the City of
Londonit was not surprising, therefore, that it was decided that RMS boys would be
selected from existing Christs Hospital students. Although this was a pragmatic decision,
there was a distinct possibility that many of the brightest boys at Christs Hospital might

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_9
194 9. An Appropriate Theoretical Lens: Lag Time
not want to commit themselves to sea-faring careers. In addition to that, Grammar School
masters at Christs Hospital had got used to preparing their best boys for classical studies
at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford, and almost certainly would not
have been pleased with the Schools decision to redirect prized students to an untried scheme
involving mathematics and navigation. One can imagine their reaction when, on January 27,
1679, the General Court of Christs Hospital issued a statement of Orders and Rules to be
Observed in the Grammar School which stipulated that the children of the school were
designed primarily for the Mathematicks School and also for the universities.
A second issue related to what content would be prescribed in the RMS syllabus. There
were naval and military schools in Continental nationsin France, and in the Netherlands,
for examplebut the students in those schools were older than those who would be in the
RMS program. What mathematical and navigational bodies of knowledge would be most
appropriate for 12- to 16-year-old boys in the RMS program? Who should draw up the RMS
curriculum? Samuel Pepys decided that the best people to consult on that issue were the
nations best mathematicians and most capable navigators. The best mathematicians, he
assumed, were at the University of Oxford or at the University of Cambridgealthough he
also chose to involve Jonas Moore in the process. So far as navigation was concerned, Pepys
decided that his friends at Trinity House comprised the group most qualified to decide which
navigational studies would be needed. However, the University mathematicians and the
Trinity House personnel had had little experience in teaching mathematics beyond arithmetic,
or navigational theory and practice, to boys aged from 12 to 16. Pepys decided to turn to
Jonas Moorea mathematician outside of the universitiesfor advice, but although Moore
had had experience in teaching mathematics to schoolboys, there is no evidence to show that
he had been successful so far as that was concerned. It did not seem to occur to Pepys or, for
that matter, to anyone else, that university mathematicians and Trinity House personnel
might not be good judges of what 12- to 16-year-old boys should be expected to learn.
The issue of who should be selected to teach the RMS boys was one which had to be
faced immediately. Obviously, knowledge of some combination of mathematics beyond
arithmetic and the principles and practices of sailing would be advantageous for a RMS
masterbut given that the master would have to teach boys aged 12 to 16 on a daily basis
for years, a strong knowledge of mathematics and navigation might not be enough. This was
another issue for which there were no data to guide those making the decisions.
There was also an issue to do with assessment. Pepyss decision to enlist the services of
Trinity House personnel as the final arbiters on whether RMS students were ready to take up
apprenticeships in the Royal Navy, or with the merchant marine, might have seemed to be
wise insofar as it placed that key element of quality control in the hands of disinterested and
expert outsiders. But would Trinity House be able to find persons with a sufficient
combination of mathematical, navigational, and educational knowledge and experience to be
in a position to assess fairly the boys whom Christs Hospital sent to Trinity House? Most
RMS boys would never have been to sea, and there was a possibility that examiners might
not be able to relate to the levels of the boys whom they were examining.
The creation of RMS was an important moment in the history of school mathematics,
for it raised key educational questions which had never before been asked or answeredin
London, in Great Britain, or indeed anywhere in the world. As has been shown in this book,
issues associated with each of the questions listed in the last four paragraphs arose at various
times during the period from 1673 to 1868, and there were times, particularly in the early
Curriculum Development in School Mathematics 195
years between 1673 and 1708, when the inability of Christs Hospital to answer even one of
the four questions adequately meant that the very existence of RMS was threatened. If it had
not been for the intellectual and teaching brilliance of James Hodgson at Christs Hospital
during the period 17091720 it is likely the RMS program would have been discontinued.
Lag Time and Curriculum Development in School Mathematics

It will be helpful to frame our history of RMS 16731868 within an appropriate
theoretical base. Figure 9.1 distinguishes between two types of mathematicsresearch
mathematics and service mathematicsand suggests links between those and mathematics
education. There are intersections between the three aspects of mathematics, and RMS
provides a case which often involved all three. Furthermore, as Figure 9.1 suggests,
ethnomathematical forces shaped, took advantage of, and stimulated changes in the forms
of mathematics and mathematics education which were incorporated into the RMS program.
The RMS boys family and community would be identified with the Christs Hospital
community.
Research
Mathematics Service
Mathematics
Mathematics
Education
Ethnomathematical Contexts,
Including Family, Community, and Work
Figure 9.1. Different ways of seeing problems or situations which might relate to
mathematics (from Ellerton & Clements, 2014, p. 321).
We are not the only writers have called on the concept of lag time when attempting to
theorize their areas of scholarship (see, e.g., Bellman & Danskin, 1954; Keraliya & Patel,
2014), but we have been the first formally to develop a lag-time theory in the domain of
mathematics education (Ellerton & Clements, 2014)although in the post-Sputnik era
around 1960 there was a casual reference to the lag between the new ideas and their effect
on schools (Organisation for European Economic Co-operation and Development, 1961,
p. 11). With respect to implemented mathematics curricula, we define lag time as the amount of
time between when a mathematical development (such as the definition of a decimal

fraction) was first made knownprobably by a mathematician or a mathematical
practitionerand when that development was normally studied for the first time as part of
implemented mathematics curricula in schools. Lag time for a mathematical topic can vary
from community to community, and part of the theory is that some communities are more
ready, and more receptive, to a particular development than others.
Thus, for example, lag time will vary within and between communities, depending on a
nations, or a school systems, or a schools, or even a teachers, willingness, or lack of
willingness, to include a new skill, concept or principle in the implemented mathematics
curriculum. In the case of the present study, which deals with implemented curricula in a
particular department (RMS), within a particular British school (Christs Hospital), over a
particular interval of time (between 1673 and 1868), we adopt a pragmatic definition by
assuming that a development had occurred within the school when that development was
regularly reflected in entries in navigation cyphering books of RMS students.
In Figure 9.1, the circles representing three different aspects of mathematics are set
within Ethnomathematical Contexts, Including Family, Community, and Work. During the
period 16731868, the ethnomathematical contexts which varied most within RMS were to
be associated with the approaches to mathematics education of the RMS masters, with
decisions made by Trinity House examiners, and with internal school political decisions
affecting RMS, the Grammar School, and school policy at any particular time. Advances in
mathematics, and in the applications of mathematics, especially in relation to navigation
principles, practices, and technologies, interacted with perceived needs of the maritime
communities (for example, the Royal Navy and the merchant marine), and these sometimes
precipitated changes to intended, implemented, and received school mathematics curricula
(Clements & Ellerton, 2015; Ellerton & Clements, 2014; Westbury, 1980).
This discussion on lag time will now be illustrated through three case studies.
Case 1: Isaac Newtons Attempt, in 1694, to Modernize the RMS Curriculum

Isaac Newtons lengthy handwritten response, to a request of him by the Christs
Hospital Treasurer, Nathaniel Hawes, for comments on a proposed new RMS curriculum
put forward by Edward Paget in 1694, was the subject of attention earlier in this book (see
Chapter 3), but here it will be re-examined, with the focus this time being on lag-time
considerations. Geoffrey Howson (1982) drew attention to how Newtons letter showed him
in an unfamiliar role, that of mathematics educator, participating in curriculum evaluation
and construction (p. 38), and here we consider Newtons arguments and comments from the
perspective of the history of school mathematics.
Influenced by Edmond Halley and Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton (1687) agreed to allow
his laws of motion to be published, in his Principia. The laws were destined to revolutionize
thinking about mechanics and astronomyand Newton himself stated that if they became
better known by navigators they could revolutionize the theory and practices of navigation.
Fortunately, for historians, Newton agreed to a request from Christs Hospital to comment, in
writing, on a proposed RMS curriculum, and some of his comments are now reproduced
below (from Turnbull, 1961), as well as in Appendix B. Note that in Chapter 3 of this book
parts of some of the following statements were also quotedthey are reproduced here
because some readers will have access to this chapter only. Newtons original spellings,
punctuations, and abbreviations are retained throughout.
Isaac Newton and the RMS Curriculum, 1694 197
In his comments, Newton made it clear that he regarded it as very important that
a formal study of mechanics should be added to the RMS curriculum. He wrote:
Nor is there one word of reasoning about force and motion, tho it be the very life
and Soul of Mechanical skill and manual operations, and there is nothing soe
Mechanical as the frame & management of a ship. By these defects its plain that
the old scheme wants not only methodizing, but alsoe an enlargement of the
learning. For some of the things here mentioned to be wanting, are requisite to
make a Mariner skilfull in the ordinary road, and the rest may be often found
usefull to such as shall become eminent for skill & ingenuity, either in Sea
affaires, or such other mechanical offices and imployments as the King may have
access in his Yards, Docks, Forts, and other places, to intrust them with. (Isaac
Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, May 25, 1694. Quoted in Turnbull, 1961, p. 359)
Later, in this same piece of correspondence, Newton elaborated on that paragraph:
For without the learning of this Article, a Man cannot be an able and Judicious
Mechanick, & yet the contrivance and management of Ships is almost wholly
Mechanical. Tis true that by good naturall parts some men have a much better
knack at Mechanical things than others, and on that account are sometimes
reputed good Mechanicks, but yet without the learning of this Article, they are soe
Farr from being soe, as a Man of a good Geometrical head, who never learnt the
Principles of Geometry, is from being a good Geometer. For whilst Mechanicks
consist in the Doctrine of force and motion, and Geometry is that of magnitude
and figure, he that cant reason about force and motion, is as far from being a true
Mechanick as he that cant reason about magnitude and figure from being a
Geometer. A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen
done, but if he is in error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you
put him out of his road, he is at a stand; Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly
and judiciously about figure, force and motion, is never at rest till he gets over
every rub. Experience is necessary, but yet there is the same difference between a
mere practical Mechanick and a rational one, as between a mere practical
Surveyor or Guager and a good Geometer, or between an Empirick in Physick
and a learned and rational Physitian. Let it be therefore onely considered how
Mechanicall the frame of a Ship is, and on what a multitude of forces and motions
the whole business and management of it depends. And then let it be further
considered whether it be most for the advantage of Sea affaires that the ablest of
our Marriners should be mere Empiricks in Navigation, or that they should be
alsoe able to reason well about those figures, forces and motions they are hourly
concerned in. And the same may be said in a great measure of divers other
Mechanical employments, as building of Ships, Architecture, Fortification,
Engineering. (Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, May 25, 1694. Quoted in
Turnbull, 1961, pp. 359360)
Having made the case for the need for theoretical learning to complement and extend
practical learning, Newton extended his argument by discussing the power, and importance
for national well being, of such theoretical learning:
For of what consequence Mechanical skill is in such Mechanical employments

may be known both by the advantage it gave of old to Archimedes in defending
his City against the Romans, by wch he made himself soe famous to all future
ages, and by the advantage the French have above all other Nations in the
goodness of their Engineers. For it is by skill in this Article of learning that
Archimedes defended his City. And tho the French Engineers are short of that
great Mechanick, yet by coming nearer to him than our Artificiers doe, we see
how well they fortify and defend their owne Cities, and how readily they force
and conquer those of their Enemies. You may consider to what perfection that
Nation by their Schooles for Sea-Officers had lately brought their Navall strength,
even against all disadvantages of nature, and yet your schoole is capable of out-
doeing them. For theirs are a mixture of all sorts of capacities, yours children of
the best parts selected out of a great multitude. (Isaac Newton to Nathaniel
Hawes, May 25, 1694. Quoted in Turnbull, 1961, p. 360)
With this last sentence Newton showed that he was trying to take into consideration the
quality of learners in the RMS program. His main premise was that the RMS boys were the
most intellectually capable boys in a large school, because that was why they had been
selected to be part of the RMS program. Therefore, he argued, they were capable of going
much further than students in the French engineering schools, who were older and had not
been required to reach such a high academic level in order to be selected for their programs.
Whether the French would have agreed with such a viewpoint is beside the point here.
Newton underscored his point in the following passage:
Theirs [i.e., students in French engineering schools] are young men whose
facilities for learning begin to be as stiff and inflexible as their bones, and whose
minds are prepossest & diverted with other things, yours are children whose parts
are Limber and pliable and free to receive all impressions. A great part of their
schools are scarce capable of much better learning than that in your old scheme,
yours have already shewn by experience that they are capable of all the learning
in the new one, except the last Article, wch has not yet been taught them, and yet
after they have learnt the rest, will prove noe harder than that wch they had learnt
before. And as your children are a select Number for parts, and capable of all the
learning here proposed, and it will be better for the Honour & advantage of the
Nation to introduce a new spirit of usefull learning among the Seamen, soe it will
give your children a higher reputation for preferment. And I take it to be for the
Honour of both King Charles his memory and of the foundation that this School
should be as learned for Sea affaires as you can well make it; and probably it was
his designe and will, it should be soe, tho all this learning was not started when he
founded it. If you admit this learning your school will certainly grow into greater
reputation, & may be thereby more apt to stir up new Benefactors and set a
Precedent of good learning to all future foundations of the same kind, and if you
admit it not, your scheme of learning will be imperfect and leave roome for future
foundations to outstrip yours, wch I believe would not be for its honour. For the
scheme of learning, as I now return it to you is an entire thing wch cannot well
want any of its members, For tis nothing but a combination of Arithmetick,
Geometry, Perspective and Mechanicks, I mean Geometry as well in spherical
surfaces as in plane ones. Geometry is the foundation of Mechanicks, &
Isaac Newton and the RMS Curriculum, 1694 199
Mechanicks the accomplishment and Crown of Geometry, and both are assisted
by Arithmetick for computing and perspective for drawing figures: Soe that any
part of this Systeme being taken away the rest remains imperfect. These
considerations have moved me to propose this Article to you, but perhaps the
Governors may see reasons against it of greater weight wch I am not yet acqted
with, & therefore I onely propose this business and leave it wholly to their
prudence. (Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, May 25, 1694. Quoted in Turnbull,
1961, pp. 360361)
Later, in the same piece of correspondence, Newton drew attention to what he saw as the
main argument against his proposal that the theory of mechanics be introduced into the RMS
program. He wrote:
The Main difficulty that I can think of, is, that the learning of this Article may
take up too much of the childrens time. And yet if for all the rest of their learning
they are allowed (as you tell me) but two yeares & halfe I question not but
another halfe yeare would be abundantly sufficient for this addition, and then they
would go to sea with a complete Scheme of Mathematicall learning. And perhaps
it may be more for their advantage to spend this halfe yeare at schoole in an
important part of learning wch they cannot get at Sea, than at Sea in learning what
they will afterwards learn there more readily if well instructed at School, before
they goe thither.
If two Yeares were not at first thought too much for the old scheme of learning
wch (before the addition of the Article of taking prospects) was very mean and
narrow; four or five years for this new scheme would be but a moderate
allowance at that reckoning, & therefore tis very much if they can learn it in three.
And yet perhaps they may run through all the parts of it in two years and an halfe;
but not soe well: And I would advise that they should rather be allowed three full
years, then be sent away smatterers in their learning.
But whether they be allowed two yeares & an halfe or three years, I conceive the
time of their examination ought to be stated. For the liberty wch the Masters of
Ships have had of taking away the boys sometimes before they had gone through
the whole course of their Mathematical learning, seems to me a mischief wch may
deserve a reformation. For the sending abroad unripe boys can be neither a
reputation to the School, nor advantage to the Nation; Such boyes being not onely
less knowing than others, but alsoe less able to make use of what they have learnt,
& more apt to forget it, as smatterers in a Grammar school doe their Latine. (Isaac
Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, May 25, 1694. Quoted in Turnbull, 1961, pp. 361
362)
Newton did not seem to know that RMS students were being allowed a mere 18 months to
complete the mathematics and navigation components of the program. Apparently, he had
been informed that they were allowed two years, and that it was possible the program could
be extended to two-and-a-half years. He recommended that the theory of mechanics should
be added to the program and that students be allowed to remain at school for three years
although he also indicated that two yeares and an halfe might be sufficient. Ideally, he
wrote, they should be allowed four or five years.
The importance of this poignant moment in the history of school mathematics ought to
be recognized. Here was Newton, one of the greatest minds in the history of mathematics and
science, recommending that the fruits of what was, perhaps, his greatest work, be part of the
curriculum for children aged between 12 and 16. Newton seemed to believe that because
RMS boys had been carefully selected by masters who were aware of their abilities, they
should be able to cope with the theory of mechanics, and that upon their graduation the
knowledge they had gained through their study of the theory of mechanics would make a
large difference to their approaches to navigating the high seas. He thought that ideally the
RMS program should occupy four or five years, but even in two-and-a-half years they would
benefit from studying a curriculum which included the theory of mechanics.
In a letter from Christs Hospital to Isaac Newton dated August 9, 1694, Newton was
thanked for his commentsregarding the RMS curriculumand informed that a school
committee had been chosen to give them long and serious consideration (William Parrey to
Isaac Newton, August 9, 1694, quoted in Turnbull, 1961, p. 390). However, although initially
it was thought Newtons views might prevail, the revised RMS curriculum which was
introduced in 1696 did not include anything on the theory of mechanics (Pearce, 1901), and
the time allowed for mathematical and navigational studies in the Royal Mathematical
School was not extended beyond 18 months. The RMS boys were still required to spend four
years in the Grammar School studying Latin before beginning their RMS studies, and even
after they moved to the RMS building they would still be required to maintain facility with
the Latin language.
The main lesson from this episode was that although, admittedly, Isaac Newton
generously gave his time in preparing his handwritten comments, he had very little idea of
what most 14- to 16-year-olds were capable of learning. He was right, though, that the RMS
boys needed more time if they were to benefit from their RMS courseand that point was
not recognized by the curriculum committee at Christs Hospital. He was also right, when he
argued that ultimately, the nation, their schools, and their children might benefit from
including a mathematics-beyond-arithmetic component in their curricula which was
considerably broader than navigation-related mathematics.
From a lag-time perspective, here was an instance where the person who created the
most up-to-date theory of mechanics was advising a school to include his ideas in their
curriculum. If his recommendation had been accepted, then the lag between theory
development and the teaching of the theory in schools would have been a mere 10 years.
Newtons recommendation was rejected because those with influence at the school believed
that the study of the classics was of greater educational merit than the study of mechanics.
The RMS boys would still be required to spend four years studying Latin texts and they
would still spend a mere one-and-a-half years studying higher mathematics and navigation.
Newton himself had never taught mathematics to 12- to 16-year olds in a school, and that
was probably also true of those who rejected his recommendation on the theory of
mechanics. Educational politics, rather than curriculum expertise and teaching experience,
seemed to prevail. Perhaps, that has always been the case so far as lag time is concerned.
Case 2: Humfrey Dittons Attempt, in 1709, to Introduce a Rigorous Algebra

Component into the Curriculum of his New Mathematical School
In Chapter 6, earlier in this book, two of the pages from Humfrey Dittons (1709)
appendix to John Alexanders (1709) A Synopsis of Algebra were reproduced (see Figures 6.1
James Hodgson and Fluxions in the RMS Curriculum 201
and 6.2), and we commented then that the level of abstraction, and the remoteness of the
topic under consideration, would have meant that hardly any of the boysindeed, probably
none of the boysin Dittons New Mathematical School (NMS) would have been able to
understand the text. Figure 6.2 was intended to illustrate a general way of constructing all
solid problems reduced to an equation of three or four dimensions (Ditton, 1709, p. 106).
The diagram was complex, and the accompanying discussion in Dittons text was equally
complex.
Humfrey Ditton, Edward Paget, and Isaac Newton knew each other well and Newton
had strongly supported both Paget and Ditton when they had applied for their positions at
Christs Hospital. Dittons (1709) Appendix suggested that his assessment of the ability of
12- to 16-year-old schoolboys to comprehend mathematics did not have much connection
with reality. Pagets use, in the early 1690s at Christs Hospital, of the Latin version of the
same algebra (Alexandri, 1693), suggested that what was true of Ditton in 1709 had also
been true of Paget 16 years earlier.
The introduction of the New Mathematical School at Christs Hospital in 1706 came
only three years after the death of Samuel Pepys. NMS represented a commendable and
brave new thrust towards school mathematics beyond arithmetic for which the mathematics
would not be restricted by having to be navigation-relevant. Each of Isaac Newton, Edward
Paget and Humfrey Ditton supported such an approach, but Samuel Pepys probably would
have wanted RMS to be properly established and functioning before any attempts were made
to introduce more general mathematics topics (Davies, 2008).
Case 3: James Hodgsons Inclusion of Fluxions in his RMS Curriculum

Our high regard for what James Hodgson did at Christs Hospital between 1709 and
1755 does not prevent us from recognizing that in the two-volume textbook he prepared for
the RMS program (Hodgson, 1723) his treatment of mathematical concepts, principles, and
proofs, was often well beyond his students capabilities. To his credit, Hodgson recognized
that that was a distinct possibilityfor, in the preface to the first volume he wrote:
As the only end of writing is information, so I have endeavoured throout the
whole course of this work to deliver everything with as much plainness as
possible, and if in my eager pursuit after this, I may have sometimes overdone it,
and by striving to make it very plain, have rendered it not quite so clear (a thing
not impossible) I am satisfied the candid and ingenuous reader will readily
forgive me, especially since tis a fault seldom to be met with in mathematics
books nowadays. (Hodgson, 1723, Volume 1, pp. viiviii)
There can be no doubt that a great deal of what Hodgson wrote in his book would not have
been understood by his RMS students.
Figure 9.2 shows three consecutive pages from an early section on trigonometry from
the first volume of Hodgsons (1723) book. The details show that Hodgson not only made
use of Isaac Newtons version of calculus (fluxions) but he also used rules delivered for
the extracting of roots. Hodgson was using Isaac Newtons fluxions only 30 years after
Newton had first made them available to the public (Kitcher, 1973). Almost certainly no
RMS student would have understood the material shown on these three pages. So, why, then,
did Hodgsona fine teacherinclude it so early in his book?
Figure 9.2. Page 64 of Volume 1 of James Hodgsons (1723) textbook for his RMS program.
James Hodgson and Fluxions in the RMS Curriculum 203
Figure 9.2 (contd). Page 65 of Volume 1 of James Hodgsons (1723) textbook for his RMS
program.
Figure 9.2 (Contd). Page 66 of Volume 1 of James Hodgsons (1723) textbook for his RMS
program.
Implications of Lag-Time Theory 205
In his preface Hodgson (1723) stated that he had not left anything undemonstrated
that was capable of it (p. viii). That probably explains why he included such difficult and
abstract material so early in the first volume of his book. Hodgsons refusal to offer
something less than what he regarded as the full story would have meant that most of his
students were reduced merely to copying text (into their navigation cyphering books). That
thought is interesting when one contemplates the idea of lag time.
Implications of Lag-Time Theory Drawn from the Three Case Studies

The three cases discussed aboveconcerning Isaac Newton, Humfrey Ditton, and
James Hodgsonprovided important examples of factors which can influence the time lag
between when a mathematical principle or application is first developed and when that
principle or application appears in school mathematics curricula.
Isaac Newtons Decision to Recommend the Inclusion of Mechanics in the Curriculum

In making his strong recommendation that the principles of mechanics that he had
developed and published recently in his Principia (Newton, 1687) should become part of the
RMS curriculum, Newton argued that learning such a topic would provide much advantage
to RMS graduates so far as their future navigation practices were concerned. Newton alluded
to the fact that RMS had been established to give Great Britain an edge over its international
competitors in sea-related issues, and in his letter to Nathaniel Hawes (May 25th, 1694) he
made it clear that he felt that RMS should include, immediately, a section on mechanics.
But Newton also indicated, in his letter to Hawes, that if Christs Hospital decided to
accept his recommendation that the principles of mechanics be included in the RMS
curriculum then it would have to allow RMS students substantially more time to complete
the RMS program. This would have meant that either RMS boys would have had to remain at
school beyond the age of 16, or the boys would have had to spend less time in the Grammar
School studying Latin texts before beginning their mathematical and navigational studies in
the Royal Mathematical School.
The school considered its options and, following a prolonged debate between relevant
authorities, it decided not to adopt Newtons recommendation. This was a conscious decision
to reject something that had been proposed by possibly the greatest mathematician in the
world at that time. Reasons were not given for the decision, but almost certainly the
authorities decided it was not desirable to allow RMS students to remain longer at school;
also, from the authorities perspective, it was not educationally desirable to lessen the amount
of time that RMS boys would spend in the Grammar School before proceeding to their
mathematical and navigational studies.
To his credit, Isaac Newton did recognize that, in schools, the learning of more
advanced mathematics would require substantially more time than was being allowed in the
RMS program. Even so, Newton seemed to have little awareness of what are referred to as
family, community, and work pressures in Figure 9.1. That Figure draws attention to how
such pressures can affect the time lag between when important mathematical advances are
made, by pure or applied research mathematicians, and when those advances are finally
incorporated into school mathematics programs. Newtons (1687) Principia showed that he
was the master of the principles of mechanics, and there can be no doubt that those principles
could be made relevant to the hurly burly of everyday life on a ship at sea. But Newton did
not seem to be aware that very few 16-year-old schoolchildren were ready to learn the
sophisticated ideas in his Principia. Furthermore, he needed to take more seriously the fact
that the sea captains and heads of Admiralty came from the upper echelons of a stratified
society. Not only did they know very little about higher mathematics, themselves, but they
also resisted moves by which academic performance in mathematics would have anything to
do with seniority in the higher ranks of the Royal Navy and the merchant marine. Samuel
Pepys knew that, and Christs Hospitals RMS represented a radical attempt to do something
about it (Davies, 2008). Isaac Newton, Edward Paget and Humfrey Ditton simply wanted to
by-pass the problem.
There are no documents giving details of the debate on whether Newtons curriculum
recommendations should be accepted, but from a lag-time perspective one wonders whether
anyone argued that no matter how relevant Newtons theory of mechanics might have been to
navigational practices, the theory was too complex, and the associated mathematics too
difficult, to be included in a curriculum for 12- to 16-year-olds. In other words, an important
aspect of time lag might be that whenever a difficult new area of pure or applied mathematics
appears, there needs to be considerable time before a mature decision can be made on
whether the new form of mathematics should be included in school mathematics curricula.
Furthermore, if it is decided that the new mathematics should be included then much
consideration needs to be given to how the associated principles, concepts, notations
theorems, proofs, and skills could be sufficiently distilled and simplified so that they would
be suitable for inclusion in school mathematics curricula. There are many examples, over the
past several centuries, of that pattern having occurredfor example, with differential and
integral calculus, the real number system, probability theory, abstract algebra, transformation
geometry, and matrix algebra.
Pagets and Dittons Premature Introduction of Difficult Algebra

Often, advances in mathematical thinking, and associated applications, need to be
percolated among mathematicians and teachers for many years, perhaps even for centuries,
before they can be expressed in forms suitable for introduction into schools. That was true
with respect to the principles of mechanics as elaborated by Newton. Sometimes,
mathematical developments may be so complex that it would not be wise for them ever to be
included in school mathematics curricula. Less complex, but nevertheless important, ideas,
like vulgar and decimal fractions, logarithms, trigonometry, and complex numbers can be
simplified to the point where they can be taught to school children and used by them in
problem-solving activities, But usually, even that will take time, and even mathematically
strong teachers who have had much experience in teaching mathematics to school children
may need time and professional development before they can satisfactorily introduce new
topics (Clements & Ellerton, 2015).
It seems that Newton, Paget, and Ditton did not appreciate the need to pause before
introducing new and difficult mathematics into schoolsthey seemed to think that all a
mathematician needed to do was to set out the mathematics clearly in writing and it should
then be possible for capable students in schools to learn it with understanding from the text
of what was written down. Newton also seemed to think that because RMS boys had been
carefully selected from those attending Christs Hospital they should therefore have been
able to learn sophisticated mathematics. History has shown that such thinking is
educationally nave. The algebraic analyses set out in Alexander (1709), Alexandri (1693),
and Ditton (1709), on a general way of constructing all solid problems reduced to an
Implications of Lag-Time Theory 207
equation of three or four dimensions (Ditton, 1709, pp. 106107), were too difficult for 12-
to 16-year-olds around 1700, and the same would be true for students of the same age in the
twenty-first century. Sensible and mature lag-time judgments in mathematics education
require a sound knowledge of mathematics and considerable experience in teaching at the
levels at which it is proposed that new curricular materials will be used.
None of Isaac Newton, Edward Paget, or Humfrey Ditton displayed the kind of
maturity in their educational thinking which was needed to make sound judgments on
whether 12- to 16-year-olds were ready to learn proposed topics in mathematics. That was
probably the main reason why both Pagets and Dittons tenures as mathematics masters at
Christs Hospital have been regarded as less than successful. Isaac Newtona faithful
supporter of both Paget and Dittonmust bear some of the blame for that.
Hodgsons Dilemma: How Much can Higher Mathematics be Compromised so that it

Will be a Better Fit for School Mathematics?
James Hodgson loved to make laboratory-type demonstrations which illustrated the
principles of mathematics and science, but what he wrote in his two-volume textbook
especially aimed at his RMS students (Hodgson, 1723) did not always seem to be consistent
with his desire for his students to understand what they were studying. When he was
explaining important concepts and results associated with logarithms and trigonometry he
tended to use higher-order mathematics which only a few of his students, if any, would have
understood. However, in the preface to the first volume of his treatise he explained that he
consciously included difficult ideas, notations, and theorems in his book in order to achieve
completeness. In other words, his attitude seemed to beIll include formally-correct
derivations of results in the text, but I wont always expect my students to understand what
Ive written.
Such an approach may not be fully appropriate from an educational perspective, but at
least Hodgson seemed to be aware of what he was doing, and therefore would have been in a
position to warn his students of impending difficulties when they were about to face them.
From a lag-time perspective, Hodgsons approach would have hastened the introduction of
difficult topics to studentsit was also likely that it would have resulted in many of the
students not understanding important aspects of what they were required to learn. That point
of view has often been adopted by mathematics educators: for example, in the twenty-first
century secondary-school students are taught about the set of real numbers and its associated
structural properties, but most of them leave secondary school without having been
introduced to how a real number can be defined. Thus, most secondary school graduates
know very little about irrational numbers other than those which are square roots or cube
roots (or perhaps other nth roots), or multiples of pi, orfor those who have reached integral
calculusmultiples of Eulers number, e. On the same theme, it is not well recognized that
much of what is regarded as elementary mathematics has difficult mathematical
foundations which most teachers of school mathematics do not fully appreciate. But, that
does not prevent some persons who do not have these deep understandings from being
excellent teachers of school mathematics.
From that perspective, Hodgsons willingness to deal with advanced mathematical
ideas in his two-volume textbook for RMS students (Hodgson, 1723) was educationally
defensible.
Concluding Comments
In 1959, Jean Dieudonn, a French mathematician associated with the influential
Bourbaki group, told a meeting of mathematicians and mathematics educators from
numerous European nations and from North America that university professors of
mathematics considered that a beginning university student intending to major in
mathematics should be familiar with a certain number of elementary techniques in which it
takes a long time to achieve proficiency, and which are essential for further progresssuch
as elementary linear algebra, analytic geometry, trigonometry, and some calculus
(Dieudonn, 1961, p. 32). Dieudonn went on to say that such expectations of secondary
school mathematics were of recent origin, because the university curriculum has undergone
deep changes which have not been matched ... in the secondary schools (pp. 3233).
Under the heading lag in secondary schools, Dieudonn (1961) then elaborated on his
claim that secondary school mathematics curricula had seriously fallen behind advances
made in modern mathematical thinking. He urged that something be done to rectify the
situation. After referring to the introduction, into universities, of modern studies in
functional equations such as integral equations, Hilbert space, tensor calculus, etc., he
stated that most secondary students simply emerge with the haziest notion of what it is all
about and that secondary schools had steadfastly resisted moves to update their
mathematics curricula (pp. 3334). Dieudonn urged schools to take on many of the new
themes and notations, and alleged that secondary schools had failed to acquaint students
with modern symbols, concepts and treatments of mathematics (p. 48). He specifically
called for the introduction of the Peano axioms into schools (p. 41).
Dieudonns (1961) strident appeal to hasten the introduction of relatively new
notations and abstract topics into the mathematics curricula of secondary schools is thought,
by many, to have been a pivotal moment in the introduction of what is now called the New
Math(s) (Moon, 1986; Organisation for European Economic Cooperation and Development,
1961). There was a worldwide embrace of the new math(s) in the 1960s and 1970s, but
ultimately even mathematicians (e.g., Kline, 1973) recognized that the attempt to reduce lag
time had failed dismally.
As argued in this chapter, lag time is an important construct which can help to
systematize the writing and interpretation of the history of mathematics education and, in
particular, of school mathematics. Isaac Newton, Edward Paget, and Humfrey Ditton seemed
to think that capable 12- to 16-year-olds could understand even very difficult mathematics
provided it was presented accurately. James Hodgson seemed to recognize that Newtons,
Pagets, and Dittons assumption was wrong, but argued that there was still merit in
presenting the whole story to students in his textbook written for RMS students (Hodgson,
1723), even if that meant they would not understand much of what they would be taught.
In writing, and reading, histories of school mathematics one needs to be aware of what
the person doing the writing assumes with respect to lag time. Some modern writers (e.g.,
Buchbinder, Chazan, & Fleming, 2015; Love & Pimm, 1996; Popkewitz, 2004) have
suggested that it can be profitable to reflect on a school-to-discipline rather than a
discipline-to-school directionality with respect to lag time. Clearly, the usefulness of lag
time as a theoretical base for historical analyses needs much reflection.
References
[Note: this is the Latin version of Alexander (1709).]
Bellman, R., & Danskin, J. M. (1954). A survey of the mathematical theory of time-lag,
retarded control, and hereditary processes. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
Buchbinder, O., Chazan, D., & Fleming, E. (2015). Insights into the school mathematics
tradition from solving linear equations. For the Learning of Mathematics, 35(2), 28.
Publishing.
Dieudonn, J. (1961). New thinking in school mathematics. In Organisation for European
Economic Co-Operation. (Ed.), New thinking in school mathematics (pp. 2649). Paris,
France: Organisation for European Economic Co-Operation.
Hospital.
stereographic, astronomy, the use of the globes and navigation. London, UK: Thomas
Page. (2 volumes)
Keraliya, R. A., & Patel, M. M. (2014). Effect of viscosity of hypdrophilic coating, polymer
on lag time of atenolol pulsatile press coated tablets. Journal of Pharmaceutical
Chemistry, 1(1), 19.
Kitcher, P. (1973). Fluxions, limits, and infinite littlenesse: A study of Newtons presentation
of the calculus. Isis, 64(1), 3349.
Kline, M. (1973). Why Johnny cant add: The failure of the new math. New York, NY: St
Martins Press.
Love, E., & Pimm, D. (1996). This is so: A text on texts. In A. J. Bishop, K. Clements, C.
Keitel, J. Kilpatrick & C. Laborde (Eds.), International handbook of mathematics
education (pp. 371409). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
Moon, B. (1986). The new maths curriculum controversy. London, UK: Falmer Press.
Streator.
Organisation for European Economic Cooperation and Development. (Ed.). (1961). New
thinking in school mathematics. Paris, France: Author.
Popkewitz, T. (2004). The alchemy of the mathematics curriculum: Inscriptions and the
fabrication of the child. American Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 334.
H.G. Steiner (Ed.), Comparative studies of mathematics curricula: Change and stability
19601980 (pp. 1236). Bielefeld, Germany: Institut fr Didaktik der Mathematik-
Universitt Bielefeld.
Chapter 10
The Importance of the Royal Mathematical School in the History
of School Mathematics
Abstract: This final chapter answers the six research questions which were stated towards
the end of the first chapter. Those questions were:
While carrying out the research for this book we came to recognize that authors of several
general histories of Christs Hospital tended to assess the effectiveness of RMS on the basis
of whether they thought it assisted, or impeded, the work of the Grammar School within the
school. A consequence of viewing the history of RMS from that vantage point was that
William Wales was glorified as the most successful RMS master. In this book, however, the
quality of Waless work within RMS has been scrutinized, and it has been argued that James
Hodgson, and not Wales, was the most successful of the RMS masters. Clifford Jones shares
our view that, although Wales was an effective RMS master, the quality of his work at
Christs Hospital seems to have been exaggerated. We have viewed RMS from a history-of-
school-mathematics perspective, and from that vantage point have argued that it was the
RMS adventure which showed the world that a school mathematics curriculum embracing
logarithms, algebra, trigonometry, and practical, navigation-related, problem solving, could
be offered, usefully, to teenage children. Hence, we have claimed that Christs Hospital,
largely through Samuel Pepys, Jonas Moore, Isaac Newton, and James Hodgson, redefined
and extended the concept of school mathematics. The chapter closes with a discussion of
limitations of the research, and how a consideration of those limitations draws attention to
various questions which need to be the subject of further research.
Keywords: Christs Hospital, History of mathematics education, History of school

mathematics, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, Mathematics education, Navigation education,
Royal Mathematical School, Samuel Pepys, William Wales

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6_10
212 10. RMS and the History of School Mathematics
Answering the Research Questions

Several challenging issues arose as we were collecting, analyzing and interpreting data
for the research described in this book. One question related to whether RMS was successful
over the years in advancing the causes of mathematics education and navigation education in,
and beyond, Great Britain. It quickly became clear to us that that question had several
apparently contradictory answers, depending on the vantage points from which one viewed
the data. Seen from some vantage points within Christs Hospital during the period 1673
1866, and especially from a Grammar School perspective, RMS was not successful. But,
seen from a history-of-school-mathematics perspective, RMS took the first steps, along an
admittedly ill-defined pathway, that ultimately led to the modern conception of school
mathematics for all.
From its beginning, in 1673, RMS found difficulty in securing masters who could teach
the required syllabus to school boys aged between 12 and 16 (Kirk, 1935; Taylor, 1954).
Most authors who have written general histories of Christs Hospital (e.g., Allan &
Morpurgo, 1984; Committee of Old Blues, 1953; Hale, 1855; Pearce, 1901; Trollope, 1834)
have maintained that only one of the RMS masters during the period 16731798namely
William Walescoped well with the demands of the position. Yet, from vantage points
outside the school, including from other schools, and from governments of other nations, the
RMS program was highly successful and something worthy of being emulated (Blanch,
1877) well before Wales became RMS master. As Allan and Morpurgo (1984) pointed out,
both Peter the Great of Russia and Louis XIV of France moved to set up similar instructions
in their own kingdoms (p. 21). In 1695, for example, a teacher of the art of navigation,
bookkeeping, arithmetic and writing was appointed by the Town Council of Glasgow
(Wilson, 1935).
But finding good teachers was not the only problem that Christs Hospital faced so far
as RMS was concerned. The school found it difficult to develop a suitable RMS curriculum,
despite the fact that it sought, and received, careful advice on that matter from scholars of the
calibre of Jonas Moore and Isaac Newton (see Appendix B to this book).
Our conclusions are that: (a) the history of RMS has for too long been seen
predominantly from the Grammar Schools perspective; (b) William Wales was not the most
successful RMS master (but James Hodgson was); and (c) from the perspective of the history
of mathematics education, it was the RMS adventure which enabled the world to see that a
school mathematics curriculum which embraced logarithms, algebra, trigonometry, and
practical problem solving, could be offered, usefully, to children from non-elite families
and hence we are claiming that the development and consolidation of the RMS program
changed the future direction of school mathematics at the post-elementary level for ever.
Answering the six research questions defined in Chapter 1 will be the main concern of
this, the final chapter of the book. Before moving on to those questions, however, we feel we
should record our considered belief that there have been many sins of omission by those who
have written about important influences on the history of school mathematics. Thus, for
example, if the arguments advanced in this book are apposite, then one might begin to
wonder why the name James Hodgson does not appear in A. G. Howsons (1982) A
History of Mathematics Education in England, or in the Handbook of the History of
Mathematics Education (Karp & Schubring, 2014)or, indeed, in almost all accounts of the
history of school mathematics.
Why was RMS Established? 213
Question 1: Why was RMS Established?

At first glance it might seem that this first question is the easiest of the six research
questions to answer. Despite Joness (2015) strongly expressed views to the contrary, we see
no reason to depart from the traditional view that Samuel PepysSecretary to the Navy
Board during the 1660s and in the early 1670s and, from June 1673, Secretary of the
Admiralty Commissionwas one of the driving forces behind the establishment of RMS
(Bryant, 1935; Christs Hospital, 1935). Pepys had been seriously embarrassed by the Dutch
fleet sailing down the Thames in 1667, destroying 15 of the British Navys ships, and towing
HMS Royal Charles, the largest of the British big ships, back to the Netherlands. His work
in helping to establish RMS was part of a longer-term, definite plan to help to improve
significantly British naval influence, reputation, and power (Davis, 1962, Turner, 1990).
Interestingly, historians have failed to notice how opportunistic, and how radical,
Pepyss response was, in 1673, to the challenges facing the British nation. His acceptance of
Christs Hospital scheme to persuade King Charles II to establish a mathematical school
within Christs Hospital which focused on preparing future navigators (Bryant, 1935; Jones,
2015) was opportunistic because he took advantage of the fact that most of the buildings
forming Christs Hospital had been damaged by the Great Fire of 1666, and there was an
urgent need for extensive rebuilding. The cost of the rebuilding program was likely to be
very large, and one would have expected that neither the school nor the City of London was
in a position to provide the money needed to rebuild the school. Pepys also recognized that
there was an urgent need for Christs Hospital to get access to Richard Aldworths legacy,
and he realized that the establishment of RMS would provide the school with the opportunity
to secure wealthy donors to come forward and assist in the rebuilding program. He saw, too,
that as the nations key naval administrator he was being presented with the opportunity to
establish a special training facility, in a well-regarded school, that could, in time, enhance the
navigational performance of the nations seamen.
What was radical about the original plan was that the Royal Mathematical School
would teach mathematics beyond arithmeticand, in particular, the kind of mathematics
needed to understand the principles and practices of navigationto boys between the ages of
12 and 16. The boys would be selected from the very best of those of appropriate age at
Christs Hospital. For almost 100 years Christs Hospital had included a substantive arithmetic
component within its large Writing School (Page, 1954), and therefore one could reasonably
have expected that each year there would be a new cohort ready to study the higher forms of
mathematics that Pepys envisaged would be needed in RMS (Committee of Old Blues,
1953).
The idea of systematically preparing boys for apprenticeships in the Navy and in the
merchant marine by teaching them higher mathematics and the principles of sailing while
still at school was new. In Great Britain, young adults were being taught those topics in small
private institutions, and in other nations similar topics were being taught to adults in special
naval or military schools. But, nowhere was such instruction offered systematically to boys
less than 16 years of age, and there was no evidence demonstrating that cohorts of boys aged
between 12 and 16 years of age were capable of learning logarithms, trigonometry, algebra,
Euclidean geometry, and the mathematics associated with astronomy and the various kinds of
sailing.
The irony is that Pepys himself knew very little mathematics. He barely knew his
multiplication tables, and therefore had to rely on the advice of others in the drawing up of an
intended curriculum for the proposed Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital. He
shrewdly turned for advice to Sir Jonas Moore, a friend of King Charles II and of the Kings
brother, the Duke of York (the future James II) (Timbs, 1860). Moore had already written a
mathematics text book which included chapters on some of the topics which would be part of
the RMS curriculum, and he not only provided links to the King, but also to the mathematical
community. He could advise Pepys on who should be appointed as the first RMS master.
Pepys agreed to the creation of RMS because he realized that Great Britain desperately
needed to do something to improve its naval power (Bryant, 1935). He realized, too, that as
Secretary of the Admiralty Commission, he not only needed to take steps to improve the
situation, but also those steps needed to be seen, and approved, by the King, by parliament,
by maritime authorities, and by the mathematics community. Notice, that the last sentence
did not include the Christs Hospital community, but Pepys took advantage of the fact that
the school was prepared to establish RMS provided it was given access to the Aldworth
legacy. It did not seem to occur to Pepys that the introduction of the RMS program might be
resented by existing teachers and administrators at the school. For the next two centuries, at
least, the Grammar School would make clear its displeasure at any suggestion that it could
legitimately be regarded as second best within the Christs Hospital community.
Pepys won over leaders of the existing maritime community by asking Trinity House, a
semi-official body which thought of itself as comprising maritime experts, to provide a
form of quality control with respect to the proposed RMS program. On Pepyss insistence,
RMS boys would not be allowed to graduate and take up apprenticeships in the Royal Navy
or merchant marine unless they had first been examined and approved by Trinity House
examiners.
Clifford Jones (2015) has maintained that Pepys himself was not involved in the initial
decision to establish the RMS program, but from our perspective it is unlikely that Pepys was
not fully aware of what was going on. Between 1667 and 1673 Pepys was the nations top
naval administrator, someone who had the ear of the King. The creation of RMS was
extraordinarily clever and, from an educational perspective, very daring. But no-one
anticipated just how difficult it would be to find effective teachers for the RMS program or
how difficult it would be for most RMS boys to study, in such a short span of time, the
amount of mathematics beyond arithmetic that the new program would demand.
Question 2: What Factors Need to be Taken into Account when Evaluating Samuel
Pepyss Work with Respect to RMS?
For most of the 30 years from 1673 until his death in 1703 Samuel Pepys was unhappy
with the way the scheme for advancing maritime education through RMS was working out
(Flecker, 1939; Kirk, 1935). From Pepys perspective, RMSs progress was held back by
corrupt management practices of administrators within Christs Hospital, by the inability of
the school to secure appropriate RMS masters, and by the tardiness of authorities to provide
the program with a suitable textbook that offered appropriate instruction in the topics which
defined the intended RMS curriculum.
Yet, despite Pepyss obvious disappointments with the early years of RMS, 70 years
after Pepyss death, and 100 years after the establishment of RMS, Christs Hospital would
be described as the best mathematical school in England (A Society of Gentlemen, 1773).
What brought about the change, and what were the effects of RMS on the history of school
mathematics in England, and indeed, across the world?
Evaluating Samuel Pepyss Work for RMS 215
The first point to be noted here is that Pepys died six years before the appointment of
James Hodgson as RMS master. During the first 20 years, or so, of his time as RMS master,
Hodgson was extremely successful in consolidating the RMS program, and in showing that,
yes, boys aged from 12 to 16 could learn mathematics beyond arithmetic. They could learn to
use logarithms and trigonometry and to solve practical problems in navigation and
astronomy. Hodgsons strong grasp of pure and applied mathematics was complemented by
his outstanding knowledge of, and facility with, instruments created for measuring and
calculating angles (especially with respect to latitude and longitude) and lengths and
distances (especially with respect to heights and measurements on a spherical surface).
Before his RMS appointment he had served as an apprentice to John Flamsteed at the
Greenwich Observatory. Then, before going to Christs Hospital, he had been very successful
in teaching mathematics and the use of modern mathematical and scientific equipment to
subscribers in the coffee houses of London, where he developed a reputation as the nations
best mathematics teacher. When he came to Christs Hospital he set out to transform RMS
from a place where students concentrated on merely copying material into navigation
cyphering books to one where students were engaged in activities which left them with
conceptual understandings of the mathematics they needed to learn. But Samuel Pepys did
not live to see how James Hodgson would give RMS a worthy educational program.
The second point is that Hodgson immediately and fearlessly demonstrated that he was
to be in charge of what happened in the name of mathematics at Christs Hospital. Thus, for
example, when he was told by the Committee of Almoners, and by Isaac Newton, that his
students should learn much of the mathematics and navigation curriculum he inherited in the
Latin language, he simply told the Almoners that the students he received from the Grammar
School did not know their Latin nearly well enough to be in a position to learn mathematics
via that language. This was not a popular message to pass on to the clergy-dominated
Almoners, but it did mean that Hodgson was able to get on with the difficult task of teaching,
in English, a challenging curriculum to beginning mathematics students. The Grammar
School was greatly embarrassed by this early episode, and probably never forgave Hodgson
for it; nevertheless, Hodgsons strength on the matter meant that his students were freed to
learn mathematics in a language that they understood.
A third point worthy of being mentioned here is that Hodgsons early success as RMS
master meant that Christs Hospital no longer felt the need to be continually consulting
supposed experts for advice on what should be happening to improve RMS. Throughout
the period 16731709 Isaac Newton had often been consulted on who should be appointed as
the new RMS master, and on what changes needed to be made to the RMS curriculum. But,
in fact, most of the mathematics masters whose appointments were recommended by Isaac
Newton experienced difficulty in the positionthe most obvious examples being Samuel
Newton and Humfrey Ditton. Isaac Newtons recommendation that Ditton should head the
New Mathematical School (NMS) was misguided and at no time during the period 1706
1715 did Ditton, or his NMS, appear to be successful. The Almoners decision, upon Dittons
death in 1715, to close down NMS carried the message that Newtons mathematical and
scientific genius did not extend to the domain of mathematics education. From that
perspective, Pepys and the Almoners had often consulted the wrong people with respect to
RMS.
Perhaps Pepyss biggest mistake with respect to RMS was to negotiate a curriculum
which was too large, and too difficult, for ordinary boys under the age of 16 to learn in 18
months. Pepys recommended that RMS boys should spend 4 years studying Latin in the
Grammar School (Bryant 1935), then 6 months in the Writing School where they would
study arithmetic to the rule of three (see Appendix A), and then a paltry 1 years on higher
mathematical and navigational studies. Although the plan of study might seem, to readers in
the twenty-first century, to have been foolish, at the time it was consistent with the educated
elites view on what was most important in school education (Zakaria, 2008). Be that as it
may, Pepys plan placed enormous pressure on the RMS master to bring the students, in a
short time, to a working knowledge of mathematics and navigation which would satisfy the
external examiners from Trinity House (who, themselves, it could be argued, knew little
about what boys aged between 14 and 16 might reasonably be expected to learn).
When Pepyss scheme did not work it was too easy for him to blame the RMS masters
(Christs Hospital, 1953; Flecker, 1939)but the fundamental cause of failure was not the
teachers but the poorly designed program which allocated far too little teaching time for the
RMS masters to teach what was a conceptually difficult curriculum. The curriculum of
Humfrey Dittons New Mathematical School (NMS) was even more difficult than the RMS
curriculum, and that was one of the factors which led to the failure of NMS.
The fact that the RMS and NMS curricula were overly ambitious had profound
implications for the future of school mathematics in other schools and other nations which
sought to emulate Christs Hospital so far as mathematics education was concerned. It would
be wrong, however, to judge Pepys or Isaac Newton too harshly on the curriculum issue
after all, Pepys himself knew virtually no mathematics beyond the most elementary parts of
arithmetic, and Isaac Newton had never taught mathematics in a school. Furthermore,
scholars of the calibre of John Flamsteed, Edmond Halley, Robert Hooke, John Wallis, and
Christopher Wren had also approved the RMS curriculum. Furthermore, Pepys did put into
place a scheme of quality control by which navigation practitioners at Trinity House were
made to feel that they had something to say on whether the RMS program was succeeding.
Curiously, despite the serious mistakes made by Christs Hospital when setting up
RMS, and despite Pepyss own major disappointments so far as the progress of RMS was
concerned, one finds it difficult to avoid the conclusion that, somehow, the creation of a
program at Christs Hospital which involved young boys from ordinary family backgrounds
studying mathematics beyond arithmetic provided the spark which ignited a movement by
which school mathematics would ultimately be studied by everyone, in all parts of the world.
Question 3: Were Isaac Newtons Efforts to Establish a Suitable RMS Curriculum

Successful?
This question has already been partly answered in the above answer to the second
question, as well as in Chapter 9 of this book. Newton was obviously a mathematical and
scientific genius, but that genius did not extend to the realm of mathematics education.
In 1694, Isaac Newton generously devoted time to writing a lengthy and thoughtful,
statement on the RMS curriculum. The text of his advice, written to Nathaniel Hawes,
Treasurer of Christs Hospital, is reproduced in full as Appendix B to this book. But,
Newtons statement revealed that he had not done his homework with respect to realities of
the situation of RMS at Christs Hospital. In his statement, Newton applauded the curriculum
which, he thought, had been put forward by Edward Pagetwho, 12 years earlier, had been
appointed, on Newtons recommendation, as RMS master. What Newton did not realize
when he made his handwritten comparisons of the new and old curriculum schemes was
Were the RMS Masters Before 1798 Unsuccessful? 217
that the new scheme was not very different from the scheme that had been handed to Paget
in 1682 and which was set out in Jonas Moores (1681) textbook A New Systeme of the
Mathematickswhich had been first published two years after Moores death, with chapters
added by Peter Perkins (especially), but also by John Flamsteed and Edmond Halley.
On May 25, 1694, Newton sent his lengthy handwritten comments to Nathaniel Hawes,
but two days later he sent another letter to Hawes which revealed that when he wrote the first
letter he had not known that what he had called the new scheme had not been developed by
Paget, and had actually been available to Paget for 12 years. He must have felt embarrassed
that his protg Paget had not succeeded in implementing it over such a long period. Before
taking up his appointment at RMS, Paget had had no practical experience in navigation, but
Newtons recommendation that he be appointed because of his strong knowledge of
mathematics and Latin had been accepted. Towards the end of his tenure at Christs Hospital
Paget had not coped with the demands of the RMS mastershiphe had often absented
himself for lengthy periods, and had been criticized for often being drunk. He was virtually
dismissed from his post in 1695 (Taylor, 1954).
Newtons handwritten comments are important insofar as they reveal much about what
mathematics Newton thought should and could be learned by 12- to 16-year-old children.
But time would tell that in fact the curriculum he thought was appropriate was much too
difficult for ordinary children of that age. Most 12- to 16-year-old boys would not have been
able to cope with the rigorous demandsfor example, in the application of the principles of
plane and spherical trigonometry to various kinds of sailingthat the new scheme proposed.
Newtons evaluations of what he referred to as the old and the new schemes were based
on whether the sequencing of the mathematics was logical, and little consideration was given
to whether 12- to 16-year-olds could cope at all with the level and rate of development that
was being assumed.
Question 4: To what Extent is it True that Most of the RMS Masters During the First
125 Years of RMSs Existence Were Unsuccessful?
The first RMS master was John Leeke, a mathematical practitioner whom Jonas Moore
described as an able mathematician and my good friend (quoted in Taylor, 1954, p. 236).
Leekes task of teaching the RMS mathemats was dauntingthe curriculum was not
established, accommodation was temporary, and Leeke himself had virtually no background
in practical navigation. Despite the fact that Jonas Moore had secretly authored a textbook, A
Mathematical Compendium, which covered much of the curriculum that RMS boys were
expected to follow (see Chapter 4 for details), no adequate textbook was made available for
use in the RMS program. In 1677, Moore agreed to prepare a suitable textbook for the RMS
boys, but the promised textbook did not appear before Moores death in 1679.
Expectations on the early RMS masters were large and decidedly unfair. The first RMS
master, John Leeke, did not copecomplaints were soon made about his teaching, and the
school agreed to appoint an usher to assist him with his work. The RMS boys were graduates
of the Writing School and probably had had no introduction to mathematics beyond the rule
of three. Leeke resigned from his position in 1677 (Taylor, 1954) and thereby became the
first of a succession of apparently highly qualified persons who were overcome by the
teaching demands placed on the RMS master (Christs Hospital, 1953). The situation was
exacerbated by the overbearing demands of the gentlemen of the Navy at Trinity House
who, arguably, were educational novices but were deemed to be educational experts capable
of assessing the readiness of senior RMS boys to become maritime apprentices.
Over the period 16731708 there were five RMS masters, and none of them could be
regarded as obviously successful (although one of them, Peter Perkins, held the position for
only a short period of time, and so it is not possible to make a sensible evaluation of his work
as master). Of the early RMS masters, the one who had the least difficulty coping was
probably Edward Paget, who had been at Trinity College, Cambridge, with Isaac Newton,
before taking up his appointment (Pearce, 1901). But, despite the efforts made to improve
and standardize the RMS curriculum in the late 1670s, Paget persisted with an old scheme
during the 1680s and early 1690s, and his work as RMS master was made to look better than
it really was by his tactic of getting the RMS boys to spend most of their class-time preparing
draft pages for navigation cyphering bookswhich, each year, would be shown to the
reigning monarch.
Late in 1708 the school was fortunate to appoint James Hodgsonalthough at that time
Isaac Newton preferred William Jones, another well qualified applicant (Taylor, 1954).
During the first 20 or so years of Hodgsons long tenure as RMS master, the Royal
Mathematical School prospered, but as Hodgson advanced in years his energy and
performance diminished to the point where, in 1748, the school brought in John Robertson to
assist him. By that stage the reputation of RMS was something to be envied, and it remained
high when William Wales was appointed RMS master in 1775 (Blanch, 1877). The
mathematics program at Christs Hospital had gained such a strong reputation during the
Hodgson era that John Robertsonwho had become RMS master following Hodgsons
deathwas appointed the head of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth. Such was the
international reputation of RMS that Robertson and Daniel Harris (RMS master between
1757 and 1775), were commissioned to help draw up the famous Mason-Dixon line, defining
the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania (Danson, 2001).
During the 90-year period from 1709 through 1798, RMS slowly developed and
maintained a fine national and international reputation. The two most notable RMS masters
during that period were James Hodgson and William Wales, whose contributions to RMS
were dealt with in Chapters 6 and 7, respectively, of this book. Waless work at Christs
Hospital was the subject of much comment in the school histories by William Trollope
(1834) and Ernest Pearce (1901). Hodgson succeeded in raising the reputation of the Royal
Foundation from a very low point, and Wales was able to maintain the already-high
reputation which had been developed by Hodgson, Robertson and Daniel Harris.
During the years immediately following Waless death, in 1798, the reputation of
Christs Hospital from the perspective of mathematics education steadily declined, so that
by the 1860s, when William Webster gave his evidence before the Taunton royal
commissioners, Christs Hospital was regarded as just another school at which a small
proportion of very capable students were prepared for university-level classics and
mathematicssee Chapter 8 of this present work.
The question To what extent is it true that most of the RMS masters were unsuccessful
during the first 125 years of RMSs existence? was framed in the negative because Trollope
(1834) and Pearce (1901) suggested that of the RMS masters during that period, only one,
namely William Wales, was successful in maintaining high standards and keeping strong
discipline. Our analyses would suggest, however, that Hodgson was the most successful,
Samuel Newton, Edward Paget, John Robertson, Daniel Harris and William Wales were
Cyphering and the RMS Implemented Curriculum 219
reasonably successful, and Peter Perkins and James Dodson may have been successful if they
had not died so early in their appointments. We would prefer to reserve judgment with
respect to the others because we feel that they experienced very difficult work conditions as a
result of an overly-ambitious curriculum being put into place, as well as a school timetable
which gave them far too little time to have much chance of leading the boys to an
understanding of the mathematical concepts and principles which were stipulated in the
intended curriculum.
Question 5: What was the Role of Cyphering in the RMS Implemented Curriculum?
Elsewhere, after analyzing several large data sets, we have argued that published
histories dealing with the teaching and learning of school mathematics in Europe and in
North America during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and for much of the
nineteenth century, have not recognized the fundamental importance of what we have called
the cyphering tradition (Ellerton & Clements, 2012, 2014, 2015). In this section we will
not only add to our analysis, in Chapter 5, of the role of cyphering in the implemented RMS
curriculum during the period 16731798, but will also make a conjecture on the influence of
Christs Hospitals cyphering practices on the methods of teaching and learning across Great
Britain, particularly during the nineteenth century. During the whole period covered by this
book, mathematics within the Royal Mathematical School proceeded according to what
might be called the cyphering tradition. Three centuries ago, most British teachers of school
mathematics, at all levels, did not stand at the front of a room and teach whole classes, and
many pupils studying mathematics did not own a mathematics textbook. Written
examinations of any kind were rarely used. Most teachers of any branch of mathematics did
not have formal qualifications in mathematics. School mathematics proceeded according to
the norms of the cyphering tradition. The report of Mr. D. R. Fearon, Her Majestys
Inspector of Schools for the London metropolitan area and an Assistant Royal Commissioner
for the Taunton Commission, on what he observed in mathematics classrooms at Christs
Hospital made it clear that even in the 1860s the cyphering tradition still held sway within
Christs Hospital (Great Britain, 1868, see especially pp. 510511).
The Writing School at Christs Hospital had been established in 1579, and an important
component of its curriculum was cyphering (City of London, 1840). Probably, the content
comprised a well-defined sequence of topicsnumeration (based on Hindu-Arabic
numerals), the four arithmetical operations, compound operations, reduction, practice, and
the direct rule of three. The small proportion of Writing School students who proceeded
beyond the direct rule of three might have grappled with the inverse and double rules of
three, loss and gain, simple and compound interest, discount, equations of payment,
alligation, fellowship, position, vulgar fractions, decimal fractions, involution, evolution,
arithmetical and geometrical progressions, and mensuration (Clements & Ellerton, 2015).
For most of the period 16731798if not all of that periodthere can be little doubt
that each RMS student was expected to prepare a navigation cyphering book during the 18
months, or so, that he spent in the Mathematical School. Jones (2015) provided evidence that
53 of these RMS navigation cyphering books have survived. The earliest of these was
prepared by John Cox in 1723, and is held in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
Jones thought that this manuscript might have been prepared in the 1750s, but in 2015 we
examined it and are certain it was prepared by John Cox in 1723. We also located a 54th
manuscript, prepared by John Batterton in 1718 and currently held in the Bodleian Libraries
at the University of Oxford. The youngest of the 54 manuscripts was prepared in 1857 and
1858 when the Reverend William Webster was RMS master (Jones, 2015).
The present writers own 3 of the 54 extant navigation cyphering booksthose
prepared by Charles Page (18251826), Henry Josiah Calkin Andrew (18351836), and
Richard Murdoch Robertson (18571858)and we have inspected another 12 of them. The
number of pages in the 54 surviving manuscripts ranges from 300 to over 700, with most of
them having over 500 pages. Originally, they were beautifully bound, with full-leather
covers, and for most of the 54 surviving manuscripts the original binding and covers remain
relatively intact. In each manuscript the handwriting, calligraphic headings, and illustrations
are extraordinarily impressive. It seems that each boy prepared, on average, between one and
two pages a day over a period of 18 months. Most pages would have taken hours to
complete.
Our careful analysis of Charles Pages book (see Ellerton and Clements, 2014) revealed
that when Charles prepared his book in 1825 and 1826 he copied many of the pages from
other sources. As with all other RMS navigation cyphering books, almost all of the entries
were mathematically correct. But, in our analysis of Charles Pages book we did find some
errors, and we believe that the evidence points to the conclusion that Charles copied most of
the entries from at least one other text. Although more research is needed, we believe it is
likely that RMS students copied directly from textbooks or from various parent cyphering
books.
John Denniss (2012) and Benjamin Wardhaugh (2012) have noted that in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries there was a tendency for British students preparing cyphering books
to copy material from popular textbookssuch as those written by Francis Walkingame and
Thomas Dilworth (Wallis, 1963). There are more than 450 North American cyphering books
and more than 135 British cyphering books in the Ellerton-Clements collection, and our
analyses of those manuscripts have confirmed Dennisss and Wardhaughs conjectures that
British students tended to copy from textbooks (Clements & Ellerton, 2015). By contrast,
North American cyphering books were less stereotyped in their content and presentation than
their British counterpartsprobably because most North American students did have
textbooks from which they could copy.
We conjecture that the RMSs strong emphasis on copying set a pattern for how school
mathematics would be taught in other British schools (Ellerton & Clements, 2015). Christs
Hospital came to be regarded, by outside observers, as the best mathematical school in the
nation, and so other schools felt drawn to require their students to copy material from
established textbooks into cyphering booksas was the practice at Christs Hospital. The
extent to which that conjecture is true is something worthy of careful research in the future.
Question 6. Did RMS Become a Prototype for Mathematics for the People?
Historians of education (e.g., Stewart, 2001), including historians of mathematics

education (e.g., Confalonieri, 2015; DAmbrosio, Dauben & Parshall, 2014; Karp &
Schubring, 2014), have not documented clear examples of notable schools teaching
mathematics beyond arithmetic to 12- to 16-year old children before 1673. We conjecture
that Christs Hospital was the first well-established school in the world to do that (Hans,
1951a, 1951b).
Proof that at least some schoolboys aged from 12 to 16 years could cope with a
rigorous curriculum which included topics like spherical trigonometry would come during
RMS and Mathematics for the People 221
the time that James Hodgson was RMS master. But, the meaning of the word cope in that
last sentence merits some reflection. With Hodgson, students were engaged actively in
learning by watching, or participating in, demonstrations and experiments in which
sophisticated mathematical and navigational equipment was used. Between 1702 and 1709
Hodgson had had much experience in leading laboratory workshops in the coffee houses of
London (Stewart, 1999, 2001; Wigelsworth, 2010) and when he first came to Christs
Hospital he insisted on the school buying relevant equipment for RMS (see Chapter 6 of this
book). There can be little doubt that such equipment would have been used by Hodgson with
his RMS students. Whether the equipment was used only by Hodgson, in demonstrations
before his classes, or whether Hodgson actually involved his students in hands-on
investigations with the equipment is not known. But, undoubtedly, Hodgson encouraged the
students to prepare navigation cyphering books, and his massive two-volume textbook,
written especially for the RMS program and published in 1723, provided the basis for
cyphering-book entries by his students.
In his evidence before the Taunton royal commissioners in 1865 (see Chapter 8, and
also Appendix C to this book), the Reverend William Webster, head mathematical master at
Christs Hospital, made several statements which strongly suggested that the cyphering
approach was still being used at Christs Hospital in the 1860s. Consider, for example, the
answer which Webster gave to Dr. Frederick Temple in the following passage:
8246. (Dr. Temple) All the time assigned to mathematics in school is passed in school
learning or saying mathematics?
Webster: Yes, or working examples. Of course, Euclid is studied and explained,
and algebra is explained, and some work round the masters desk takes place, and
a great deal is done where the boys sit.
This passage suggests that although there was some whole-class instruction, there was also
much work done in what was called recitation sessions (during which time, individual
students came to the teachers desk, cyphering books were inspected, and students responded
to questions on content that the teacher had asked them to learn at the last recitation session).
Then the teacher would set some new content to be learned, and new exercises to be solved,
and students would return to their desks (or to seats placed along the cyphering benches in
the main RMS room). They would then spend hours meticulously making handwritten notes,
entering solutions to exercises (which, in the last recitation session, had been assessed, by the
master, as having been correctly done), and making beautiful illustrations in their cyphering
books. They would also commit set materialsuch as Euclidean theorems, and definitions
to memory in preparation for the next recitation session (and ultimately for when they would
appear before Trinity House examiners). This was consistent with a cyphering tradition
which, for centuries, had defined how school mathematics was to be learned (Ellerton &
Clements, 2012).
So, yes, we believe that the Royal Mathematical School at Christs Hospital showed
how mathematics for the people could be engendered in a school. We realize that that is a
big claim, and hope, and expect, that the origins of modern secondary school mathematics
will become the subject of further scholarly research.
Historians, both those outside of mathematics education (e.g., Pearce, 1901; Trollope,
1834) and those within mathematics education, seem to have been unaware of, or have
disregarded, the achievements of RMS. James Hodgsons finely-tuned teaching abilities and
his deep knowledge of mathematics probably saved the RMS program from early extinction.
Furthermore, the perceived success of the RMS program inspired many other schools to
redefine their curricula so that they too would teach mathematics-beyond-arithmetic. From
that perspective, the period 17091755, when Hodgson was RMS master, represents a
watershed in the history of school mathematics. Yet Hodgsons work at Christs Hospital is
not mentioned at all in Geoffrey Howsons (1982) A History of Mathematics Education in
England, or in Geoffrey Howsons, Christine Keitels, and Jeremy Kilpatricks (1981)
Curriculum Development in Mathematics, or in the collection of scholarly papers on the
history of mathematics education edited by Alexander Karp and Gert Schubring (2014).
The establishment of RMS in 1673 was important in the evolution of modern school
mathematics, but what other influences shaped that evolution, and to what extent were those
influences present within Christs Hospital? We have raised the possibility that the RMS
model, with its emphasis on copying from textbooks or from parent cyphering books,
precipitated a mode of cyphering in Great Britain which was heavily dependent on popular
textbookssuch as those by Walkingame and Dilworth (Wallis, 1963). But the influence of
Christs Hospital on school mathematics in Great Britain did not stop with content
similarities arising from the tendency to copy notes and exercises from textbooks.
As mentioned above, the navigation cyphering books prepared by RMS boys were
extraordinarily impressive so far as their physical ambience was concerned. Those produced
after 1754 had beautiful, heavy, full-leather covers with gilt Royal crests stamped on the
outsides of the front and back covers. The first interior page was usually a page which carried
the title Elements of Navigation followed by the name of the RMS student, the name of the
RMS master at the time, and a reminder that RMS was established as a Royal Foundation.
Then, many of the pages which followed were watermarked. The handwriting, calligraphy,
and illustrations were usually very impressive, with each page being a work of art, featuring
carefully ruled borders. Two colors of ink were used, and there was a generous allocation of
spacethe appearance of the entries was never one that suggested a need to cram material
together. Diagrams were often hand-colored.
The point we want to make here, though, is not so much how attractive the RMS
cyphering books wererather, we wish to record our view that the Christs Hospital
approach to cyphering had a decided influence on what happened across the nation in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when increasing numbers of children were preparing
cyphering books. From the point of view of appearance, British cyphering books tended to be
mini-versions of the Christs Hospital cyphering books (Ellerton & Clements, 2014;
Clements & Ellerton, 2015). There was a remarkable sameness about them, even though they
were prepared in many different schools scattered all over Great Britain.
In Chapter 8 of this book we argued that the introduction of the Cambridge Tripos was
another major link in the evolutionary chain. Although the Tripos was a university-based
examination, its high prestige meant that between 1800 and 1868 it influenced what
mathematics was taught, and how it was taught, to Grammar School students at Christs
Hospital (Blanch, 1877).
Preparation for the Tripos was not consistent with the needs of the naval boys in the
RMS program, and therefore the naval boys steadily came to be seen as less and less
important in the scheme of things in the Mathematics Department at Christs Hospital. The
idea of preparing top students in elite schools like Christs Hospital for the Tripos
examination represented the second phase of the mathematics-beyond-arithmetic push in
Limitations and Questions for Further Research 223
Great Britainthe first phase having been the work done in the RMS program. Effective
preparation of students for the Tripos required students to be introduced to a much wider
view of mathematics than the navigation orientation in the RMS program at Christs
Hospital. In this second phase, school mathematics was no longer to be confined to a small
number of students who were being prepared for one kind of professional career.
More generally, the increasing power of examinations such as the Tripos and external
written examinations for school mathematics set by the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford
and London (Roach, 1971; Willis, 2013), sounded the death knell of the cyphering approach
in Great Britain. A similar story can be told in other countries. In the United States of
America, for example, we have argued elsewhere that the introduction of external written
examinations hastened the relatively early demise of the cyphering tradition in North
America (Ellerton & Clements, 2012).
Limitations of the Research and Questions for Further Research

The reason for combining limitations with questions for further research in this
section is that many of the questions which need to be further researched arise out of
limitations associated with the analyses carried out when this book was being prepared.
In this study we intensively studied RMS from 1673 to 1798, and then surveyed later
changes during the period 18001868. Almost certainly, there were important developments
in school mathematics at other British schools during the same periods, particularly within
the so-called dissenting academies (see, e.g., Bellhouse, 2010; Howson, 1982; Stephens &
Roderick, 1977), but we have argued that Christs Hospital was the first major school to
teach mathematics beyond arithmetic to 12- to 16-year-olds. Although we believe that claim
to be true we recognize that it needs to be checked against a more extensive set of data then
we were able to examine. More generally, we recognize that our acceptance of Nicholas
Hanss (1951a, 1951b) claim that Christs Hospital, with its introduction of the RMS
program in 1673, became the first modern school in the world is likely to be challenged by
some scholars, especially those based in Continental European nations. We look forward to
counter claims being madebut would comment that an adequate counter would need to
provide clear evidence that a large school offered regular studies in mathematics beyond
arithmetic, over many years before 1673, to children aged between 12 and 16.
Research into the characteristics and effects of the cyphering tradition in many parts of
the world, including Great Britain, is still in its infancy (see Clements & Ellerton, 2015;
Denniss, 2012; Ellerton & Clements, 2015; Stedall, 2012; Wardhaugh, 2012). Given the
strength of that tradition for hundreds of years, both in Europe and in North and South
America, the dearth of research is amazing. Although 54 navigation cyphering books
prepared by RMS boys are now known to be extant there is still much to be investigated in
relation to how different RMS masters taught mathematics. Thus, for example, there is a
need to research special features of the classroom cultures which prevailed when different
RMS masters prepared their students. Were James Hodgsons and William Waless attitudes
towards cyphering, and classroom management, basically the same? How were textbooks
used, especially those written by RMS masters (e.g., Hodgson, 1723; Robertson, 1754;
Robertson & Wales, 1780)? It would be extremely helpful if cyphering books prepared in the
Writing School at Christs Hospital at any time between 1552 and 1868 were to be found.
The navigation cyphering books were prepared in the Royal Mathematical School.
Grammar School masters at Christs Hospital, with their strong emphasis on Latin and
Greek texts and their unwavering internal belief that their School ought to be the leading
academic department within Christs Hospital, had a large effect on the development of the
Royal Mathematical School. The fluctuating relationships between RMS and the Grammar
School influenced which students would study mathematics in the RMS program, and for
that reason those relationships need to be more deeply studied. More generally, the period
16731868 was a time when classical studies continued to be seen, by many, as the most
important studies within any well-regarded schoolbut this perception was being challenged
towards the end of the period. The questioning of the educational value of the classics, which
was a by-product of the gradual entry of mathematics beyond arithmetic into school
curricula, both at Christs Hospital and elsewhere, is a theme worthy of further study.
We wish we could have had access to more reminiscences of time spent in RMS
classrooms by RMS students. Such reminiscences might have been written in diary form
while students were still at school, or they might have been penned by RMS graduates who
were serving apprenticeships at sea. If such reminiscences exist they could throw light on
what tended to happen in RMS classes. What was the role of the usher? Did a particular
master tend to be present in the main RMS classroom, or did he tend to be in an adjoining
office most of the time? Was there much whole-class or small-group teaching, or did the
students spend most of their time preparing pages for their cyphering books? Was discipline
harshly administered by some, or all, of the masters? The reminiscences might also throw
light on what RMS students thought about the summative assessment procedure whereby
they were individually questioned by Trinity House examiners.
The November 24th, 1900 issue of the periodical The Navy and Army Illustrated
included a four-page article on the history of the Royal Foundation at Christs Hospital
(Blues and the Royal Navy, 1900). The anonymous author of the article was lukewarm
about the effects of the Foundation, pointing out that between 1882 and 1900 only 38 RMS
boys had qualified for and entered the Navy and, of those, more than half (in fact, 21 of
them) had become assistant clerks. The article concluded:
The results of recent competitive examinations show that the training is sound and
efficient; and if the past of Christs Hospital cannot point to an extensive record
of glorious names it witnesses to a steady performance of duty to Queen and
country by those of its sons who have gone down to the sea in ships. (p. 248)
Chapter 3 of Ken Mansells (2014) Christs Hospital Pupils 15521902 devoted 39 pages to
lists of distinguished old boys of Christs Hospital, but only one of those pages listed names
of those who had been in the naval service (pp. 5960). By contrast, the names of those
distinguished for army service occupied two pages, those for ecclesiastical service
occupied three pages, and those for business/industry occupied five pages. One might be
forgiven for thinking that those hundreds of young RMS graduates who took up
apprenticeships in the Navy or the merchant marine had somehow been forgotten by their
school. Research is needed to answer questions such as:
Did the existence of RMS mean that more qualified persons took up apprenticeships
with the Royal Navy or the merchant marine than would have been the case if RMS
had not existed?
Did most RMS graduates become more effective sailors than others who took on
apprenticeships in the Royal Navy or the merchant marine?
Limitations and Questions for Further Research 225
Were the effects of the RMS program on students consistent over time? For example,
did RMS graduates from the Hodgson era become better seamen than graduates from
the period when William Wales was RMS master?
Perhaps our most controversial claim in this book is that the greatest weaknesses of the
RMS program during the period 16731798 were the program structure and its curriculum.
Those who made the early decisions on program and structure were not well qualified to
make such decisions. Samuel Pepys knew virtually no mathematics himself, and he never
taught mathematics or navigation to boys. From our perspective it is not surprising, therefore,
that he made the serious error of thinking that RMS boysinitially he was thinking of boys
aged between 12 and 16 years but later he modified this to boys aged between 14 and 16
would need only 18 months to take in a sophisticated mathematics-beyond-arithmetic
curriculum which included topics like plane and spherical trigonometry. Pepys also did not
object to the RMS boys spending more than four years studying Latin and Greek texts before
beginning their mathematical studies within RMS. Although we recognize that the study of
classics was greatly valued by most highly educated people in the seventeenth century, we
would maintain that Pepyss insistence on large doses of Latin for young boys preparing for
service in the Navy or the merchant marine was unrealistic.
But the lack of common sense with respect to the development of the RMS curriculum
did not stop with the priority given to the study of classics. We would claim that Pepys and
other early RMS administrators did not take appropriate steps to develop a suitable
mathematics component of the RMS curriculum. Neither did they exercise much wisdom on
their choices of who should advise them with respect to appointments of early RMS masters.
We would claim, probably controversially, that Pepys and the Committee of Almoners relied
too heavily on the advice of mathematical experts like Isaac Newton with respect to
appointments of RMS masters and to the content and sequencing of the RMS curriculum.
The evidence presented in this book shows that the experts appeared to have little idea of
the kinds of mathematics, and how much mathematics, ordinary boys could reasonably be
expected to learn in 18 months. Yet, because of the status of the expertsMoore, Wren,
Newton, Flamsteed, Halley, Wallis, Gregory, etc.the early RMS curriculum remained
more or less intact for over 100 years. The curriculum was too advanced, and many RMS
boys simply rebelled. The numerous instances of poor behavior by RMS boysnot to
mention the prevalence of RMS boys running away from the schoolmight be traced to
an inappropriate curriculum, which arose because it was assumed that the possession of
mathematical expertise ensured the possession of expertise in mathematics education.
Two comments ought to be made with respect to what has just been written. First,
many of those making curricular decisions about school mathematics today need to recognize
that the possession of mathematical expertise does not necessarily guarantee the possession
of expertise in mathematics education. And second, we strongly believe that histories written
from different perspectives or vantage points serve to enrich our understanding of those
histories. It would therefore be interesting if a well-documented history of RMS could be
written by authors who believe that only expert mathematicians are well qualified to design
school mathematics curricula.
Our final comment relates to historiography. Our discovery that William Trollope, who
wrote the first large-scale history of Christs Hospital (Trollope, 1834), was the grandson of
William Wales, helped us to understand why Wales had been so generously treated in
Trollopes account of the Royal Foundation. It seemed to us, too, that later historians on
Christs Hospital, such as Ernest Harold Pearce (1901), had been heavily influenced by
Trollopes account of the history of RMSdespite the fact that Pearce (1908) criticized
Trollope (1834) and Wilson (1821) for failing to consult important primary sources.
According to Pearce (1908), neither Trollope nor Wilson wrote history in the sense of
investigation (p. vii), and each had relied too heavily on direct observation (p. vii).
Although we agree with Pearces (1908) comments that, the only possible way to get
at the facts is to go through the voluminous and carefully preserved minutes of the Courts
and Committees (p. vii), we would hasten to add that writing a good history of Christs
Hospital necessarily involves more than uncovering and reporting facts. There are challenges
associated with choosing which facts ought to be emphasized, and which ought to be
linkedand, once the most relevant facts have been chosen and connected, there is the
difficult task of relating and interpreting the sequences of events.
Trollope and Pearce were clergymen when they wrote their histories of Christs
Hospital and, given their strong classical backgrounds, and in particular their previous direct
and intimate associations with the Grammar School, it is not surprising that they often saw
and interpreted events from a Grammar School perspective. Although we would like to think
that both Trollopes and Pearces biases were at the subconscious level, we are not the only
writers to have been critical of their histories of the School. George Allan (1937), for
example, described Trollopes (1834) book as a ponderous and unreadable tome (p. 1). He
was equally critical of Pearces (1901) Annals.
From our vantage point, the person who saved the Royal Foundation from early closure
was James Hodgsonsomeone who was an outstanding teacher and a dedicated servant to
Christs Hospital for 46 years. But that is certainly not the impression one gets if one reads
Trollopes (1834) book, or Pearces (1901) account of the history of RMS. Indeed, in
Pearces (1908) 365-page second edition of his Annals of Christ Hospital the name
Hodgson never appeared, not even once.
Postscript
On May 4, 1901, the English periodical Black and White Budget reported that the
ancient home of Christs Hospital in London was threatened with destruction,
with parliamentary powers being sought to authorise the Governors to sell the site with the
object of covering the whole area with streets, shops and warehouses (Christs Hospital,
1901, p. 186). The periodical reported that an earnest protest had been received from Sir
John Brunner, Lord Monkswell, Dudley Fortescue, Sir Robert Hunter and Lord Balcarres,
M.P., and other gentlemen officially representing the Commons and Footpaths Preservation
Society, Kyrle Society, Metropolitan Public Gardens Society, the National Trust for Places of
Historical Interest or Natural Beauty, and the Society for the Protection of Ancient
Buildings (p. 186). Readers were informed that at the offices of each of these organizations
papers of protest are lying awaiting signatures of those interested in preserving one of the
noblest remains of Old London (p. 186).
Despite such strong opposition, the famous blue-coat school building in Newgate was
sold and in 1902 the school, which for centuries had been home to legions of children,
mainly boys from poor families, was relocated to Horsham, over 40 miles away in West
Sussex. In the new semi-rural environment there was much more space for the students to
engage in sporting activities, like playing cricket (Pearce, 1908; Seaman, 1977).
Postscript 227
School historians (e.g., Pearce, 1901, 1908) have recorded how great the school based
in London had been, and how it had accomplished its main mission, over the centuries, of
providing an excellent form of education for children from seriously poor families. But one
thing the historians have failed to recognize was that there was a time when this school was,
from a mathematics education perspective, something more than a fine schoolit was, in
fact, one of the best schools in the world. It is arguableindeed, we have presented an
argument for the case in this bookthat it was at Christs Hospital in London that secondary
school mathematics, as the world knows it today, had its beginnings.
The Mathematics Department at the Horsham campus still, officially, carries the title
Royal Mathematical School, and the massive Antonio Verrio painting, commemorating the
creation in the 1670s and the 1680s of the Royal Mathematical School, continues to dominate
the schools main dining hall. We visited the school at Horsham in December 2015, and were
taken on the Verrio Tour by two very competent and engaging senior students. Gazing up
at the Verrio painting we were not only struck by its magnificence, but also by the fact that,
somehow, back in 1902, the school had managed to relocate the painting from London to
Horsham. To us, the painting symbolizes the historical significance of the Royal Mathematical
School, both within Christs Hospital and beyond. But to many, it is simply one of the largest
paintings on canvas in existence.
We looked at the Verrio from a history-of-school-mathematics perspective. Our
minds were filled with wonder as we reflected on those times, 330 years ago, when blue-coat
boys knelt before King Charles II and King James II, showing them drafts of pages of
mathematical calculations and illustrations that they had prepared for navigation cyphering
books which they would take with them when they left school. The boys were Kings boys
and, from our vantage point, they represented a new era in school mathematics. As we have
tried to show in this book, the Grammar School people at Christs Hospital have never fully
appreciated the significance of that. We see the Verrio as marking a point in time when
school mathematics beyond arithmetic began to be offered to the people.
A determined modern-day visitor to the school at Horsham can find, within the
impressive Christs Hospital museum, a fine portrait of James Hodgson. More prominently
displayed, elsewhere, are separate portraits of William Wales and his wife, Mary Wales.
Until recently (see Jones, 2015), Hodgson and his contribution to the history of school
mathematics were largely hidden from vieweven at Christs Hospital, even in the United
Kingdom, and even among international scholars who have written about the history of
school mathematics.
Our book has been about the introduction of a form of mathematics beyond arithmetic
intended, originally, for boys aged between 12 and 16 who were from impoverished
backgrounds. Boys beginning the RMS course of study needed to commit themselves to take
up apprenticeships in the Royal Navy or the merchant marine when they left school. The
creation of the RMS program was only a tiny step towards secondary-school mathematics
for all, but one might argue that, however small and halting that step might have been, it
proved to be decisively in the right direction.
Our judgment is less sanguine. From our perspective, RMS established an elitist form
of mathematics education which was for boys only. A seriously flawed, top-down model of
program development and implementation was adopted, and such was the difficulty of the
intended curriculum, and the small amount of time allowed for the students and their teachers
to cope with the implemented forms of that curriculum, that many of the boys were reduced
merely to copying material and cramming for final examinations conducted by supposed
experts who knew little about teaching. In the beginning the difficulties of the situation were
compounded by the expectation that the boys should be able to converse in Latin. Many of
the masters quickly succumbed to the unrealistic expectations, but somelike Edward Paget,
Samuel Newton, James Hodgson, John Robertson, Daniel Harris, and William Wales
devised mechanisms for coping. Unfortunately, the mathematics-for-the-minority vortex
(Clements, 1992) forced students, teachers and examiners to adopt questionable practices.
In helping to establish RMS at Christs Hospital Samuel Pepys builded better than he
knew (Kevorkian, 2013). The question iswas the structure he helped to create an
educationally sound one? We say, No. For example, Pepyslike Isaac Newton
recommended that RMS students should learn mathematics in Latin because Latin was the
scientific lingua franca (Abrahamson, 2014). Pepys and Newton, and others who advised
Christs Hospital with respect to RMS, always seemed to miss the point that, fundamentally,
RMS students were being prepared to become practical seamen who could apply relevant
mathematical principles to their work. They were not being prepared to become research
mathematicians. The fact remains, though, that many RMS graduates did become excellent
practical navigators. Furthermore, many schools, in various nations, developed mathematics
programs which were inspired by what they thought was happening in the Royal
Mathematical School within Christs Hospital. From that perspective, Samuel Pepys, and
those others who worked hard to establish RMS, changed the direction of school
mathematics, forever.
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Pearce, E. H. (1908). Annals of Christs Hospital (2nd ed.). London, UK: Hugh Rees, Ltd.
University Press.
Robertson, J. (1754). The elements of navigation. London, UK: J. Nourse.
Nourse.
Allan.
Stephens, M. D., & Roderick, G. W. (1977). Education and the dissenting academies. History
Today, 27(1), 4754.
Taylor, E. G. R. (1954). The mathematical practitioners of Tudor & Stuart England 1485
Timbs, J. (1860). School-days of eminent men. I. Sketches of the progress of education in
England, from the reign of King Alfred to that of Queen Victoria. II. Early lives of
celebrated British authors, philosophers and poets, inventors and discoverers, divines,
heroes, statesmen and legislators. London, UK: Follett, Foster & Co.
Pickering.
Wilson, D. K. (1935). The history of mathematical teaching in Scotland to the end of the
eighteenth century. London, UK: University of London Press.
Zakaria, F. (2008). The post-American world. New York, NY: W. Norton & Company.
Short Biographies of the Authors
Nerida F. Ellerton has been Professor within the Mathematics Department at Illinois State
University since 2002. She holds two doctoral degreesone in Physical Chemistry and the other in
Mathematics Education.
Between 1997 and 2002 Nerida was Dean of Education at the University of Southern
Queensland, Australia. She has taught in schools and at four universities, and has also served as
consultant in numerous countries, including Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, China,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, the United States of America, and Vietnam. She has written or
edited 16 books and has had more than 150 articles published in refereed journals or edited
collections. Between 1993 and 1997 she was editor of the Mathematics Education Research Journal,
and between 2011 and 2015 she was Associate Educator of the Journal for Research in Mathematics
Education.
In recent years Nerida has concentrated her research efforts in two areasthe history of school
mathematics and problem posing in mathematics education. In 2012, 2014, and 2015, respectively,
Springer published the 223-page Rewriting the History of School Mathematics in North America
16071861, the 367-page Abraham Lincolns Cyphering Book and Ten other Extraordinary
Cyphering Books, and the 204-page Thomas Jefferson and his Decimals: Neglected Years in the
History of U.S. School Mathematics. She jointly authored each of those books with M. A. (Ken)
Clements.
In 2015 Springer published a 567-page edited collection on problem posing which was jointly
edited by Florence Mihaela Singer, Nerida, and Jinfa Cai. In 2016 Nerida received the outstanding
researcher award at Illinois State University.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
234 Author biographies
McKenzie A. (Ken) Clementss masters and doctoral degrees were from the University of
Melbourne, and at various times in his career he has taught, full-time, in primary and secondary
schools, for a total of 15 years. He has taught in six universities, located in three nations, and since
2005 has been Associate Professor (20052006) and then Professor (2007present) within the
Mathematics Department at Illinois State University.
Ken has served as a consultant and as a researcher in Australia, Brunei Darussalam, China,
India, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States
of America, and Vietnam. He served as co-editor of the three International Handbooks of
Mathematics Educationpublished by Springer in 1996, 2003 and 2013and, with Nerida Ellerton,
co-authored a book on mathematics education research which was published by UNESCO in 1996.
Ken has authored or edited 32 books and over 200 articles on mathematics education, and is
honorary life member of both the Mathematical Association of Victoria and the Mathematics
Education Research Group of Australasia. During recent years Springer has published four books on
the history of school mathematics jointly authored by Ken and his wife, Nerida Ellerton.
Ken and Nerida plan to return to their homeland, Australia, in 2018, where they expect to
resume their work as co-directors of their Australian Heritage Education Museumwhich is in
Toowoomba, in the state of Queensland. The Museum will have wide-ranging themes, covering areas
such as sport, music, sewing, technologies, mathematics, language, science, geography, history,
colonialism, the influence of America on education in Australia, British influences on Australian
education, one-room schoolhouses, Kindergarten, primary schools, secondary schools, tertiary
education, distance education, and equity and educational opportunities.
In October 2015 Ken delivered a distinguished lectureship presentation for the College of
Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University.
Index of Appendices
Appendix Title Page
A Samuel Pepyss 1677 List of Defects in RMS, and 237

Associated Remedies
B Isaac Newtons Comments on the RMS Curriculum, 247

1694
C William Websters Evidence Before the Taunton Royal 259

Commission, 1865
D The Intended Christs Hospital Mathematics Curriculum, 271

in the Mid-1860s, from:
Great Britain (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission Vol.
VII, General reports of the Assistant Commissioners
(pp. 437454). London, United Kingdom: Author.
E Responding to Reviewers 281
F James Hodgsons (1706) Preface to his Textbook on 291

Navigation

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
Appendix A
Samuel Pepyss 1677 List of Defects in RMS, and Associated
Remedies
This appendix provides a transcription of the minutes of five special committee

meetings held at Christs Hospital on October 22, November 6, 8, 13, and December 3, 1677
(Kirk, 1935). At those meetings a document prepared by Samuel Pepys (Discourse to the
Governours of Christs Hospital touching the state of the New Royal Foundation there) was
carefully considered. Copy of the original is held in the Pepys Library, Magdalene College,
at the University of Cambridge. Copies of the version of Pepyss Discourse that appeared
in the minutes of General Court of Christs Hospital can be found in the London
Metropolitan Archives (LMA), and that version of the Discourse and other related documents
were examined by the writers when they visited LMA at various times during 2012, 2014,
and 2015. According to the minutes of the meeting held on December 3rd, 1677, the five
committee meetings had been called because Secretary Pepys was desirous to prepare an
humble address to his May for leave to distribute the said forty children in the manner as the
Court conceives may answer his May gracious intentions which when ready to be presented
to this and afterwards to his Majesty, the which Secretary Pepys promised to do.
Clifford Jones (2015) has maintained that it is incorrect to attribute the preparation of
the statements on defects and remedies that would be approved by the General Court solely
to Samuel Pepys, and on that point he is almost certainly right. But the points were originally
recorded in Pepys own notebook and in the remedy to the third institutional defect he
originally used the first-person pronoun I. The summary on the back cover of Joness
(2015) book claims that the book dispels the myth that Samuel Pepys started the school and
provides new insights into his role during the first thirty years. It seems that Jones was on a
mission to question the traditional emphasis on Pepyss role in the establishment and early
years of RMS. However, careful analysis of the original documents indicates that Pepys was
the key figure in preparing the words used in the statements of defects and remedies, even if
sometimes the original words were modified as a result of committee discussions.
Christs Hospital did not give London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) permission to
allow us to have access to the original handwritten minutes of the meetings of the General
Court of Christs Hospital in which the defects and remedies were described, and
therefore we had no alternative but to view the minutes through early microfilm copies at
LMAmany words in these copies were very difficult to decipher. However, when visiting
the Pepys Library at Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge we were able to
check Pepyss original versions and that helped us to identify many words that had not been
easy to decipher in the micofilm copies that we had examined at LMA. We have attempted to
give the text of the final report in the Christs Hospital General Court minutes, with the
original wording, spellings, and abbreviations, retained. Often, sentences are not fully
grammatical, and spelling deviates from what would be expected in the twenty-first century.
Nevertheless, readers should have little difficulty determining the intended meanings.
Readers are reminded that the committee met after RMS had been operating for almost
four years. There had been only one RMS master during this time (namely, Mr John Leeke),
and Samuel Pepys was dissatisfied with RMSs curriculum, with the RMS students lack of

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
238 Appendix A: Defects in the Institution
mastery of the Latin language, and with John Leekes teaching. Pepys had had feedback from
Trinity Housewhich had had the ultimate responsibility of deciding whether senior RMS
students were ready to be apprenticed to the Navy or the merchant marineinforming him
that the quality of RMS graduates left much to be desired.
An Attempted Reconstruction of the Text of the Committees Final Report

According to the minutes of the committee meeting held on December 3rd, 1677, the
Comte had some debate about the Table assigned for children to be received in and their
going out of the severall Schooles whether it was a Rule preferred onely for the
Mathematicall Foundation or for the whole Foundation. It was agreed that it was absolutely
necessary that this said Table should be strictly observed for the children that shall be
admitted into the Mathematicall Schoole But at present are not satisfied it should be a Rule
for all the children that shall hereafter be admitted into the House that there may be as much
Charity to admit a child of tenn or eleven yeares into this Hospitall that can neither read nor
write and if soe then the said Table cannot comprehend all the children that shall be admitted
for time to come. But as concerning this they resolved to consider further thereof at their next
meeting the names of all the children in the House and at Hertford Towne and Country and
ordered to be drawne out with their severall ages and now proficiency in Learning that soe
the Comte may be satisfied as to the aforesaid Tables.
The committee then reported a summary of its deliberations on Pepyss list of defects
of the RMS, and offered possible remedies to those defects. The report was addressed to the
Right Worshipll Sr. John Frederick, who was the President of Christs Hospital. The defects
had been elaborated by Samuel Pepys, and the remedies approved by the special committee
(Kirk, 1935). In what follows the original wording, spelling, and punctuation, in the report
have been retainedas far as could be deciphered from the handwritten report.
Defects in the Institution
Defect the 1st

The children being by the Constitution to remaine the whole forty together in the
Mathematicall Schoole and removable thence by 10 a year every boy must stay there foure
yeares for his learning what may be obtained in less than a yeare and halfe; besides by those
being obliged to be there four yeares and to goe thence at sixteene they do not onely loose
much of the time they might continue learning in the Grammar and the Writing Schooles, but
must be put into the Grammar Schoole before they are ripened for it, and have too little time
left for it by reading and writeing and have too little time left them to stay when they are
there.
Remedy: The King to be prevailed with to remitt the childrens being altogether in the
Mathematicall Schoole and to give way that noe more be there than the Mathematicall master
can teach himself which by his present practice seems to be twenty, the remaining twenty to
be chosen out of the rest of ye Grammar Schoole, soon while they remaine in the Grammar
Schoole wearing nevertheless the Kings Badge and lying in the Kings Ward; but not to goe
up to the Mathematicall Schoole till the number of the mathematicall schollars shall by the
disposal or removal of some of them be reduced to within twenty, and then the twenty to bee
from time to time and made & kept full, out of the ripest of the Kings children formerly
Samuel Pepyss List of Defects and Remedies 1677 239
chosen, and remaining in the Grammar Schoole, new elected persons being to be then made
out of the grosse of the children to make up the forty again. This Court agrees with the Comte
herein.
Defect the 2nd

Noe course or degree of Skill in the Mathematicke is in the constitution described, soe,
as that the boys are taught some one thing, some another, some things unnecessary, while
more necessary are omitted and harder things taught, though lesse usefull than others that are
more easy so they are not taught, the choice of what is necessary not being fit to be wholley
left to the judgment of a Schoole Master who is noe practised seaman and therefore ought not
to pretend to more than the teaching in the best manner what others of greater experience
shall determine to be necessary, least the children should be otherwise burthened with things
they have noe present use of, and consequently what they must therefore forget, besides that
the Trinity House by this meanes are at a losse in what they are to examine the children in,
and the children alsoe subject to great discouragement from their being examined in points
they have not been instructed in.
Remedy: The Comte upon mature consideration of this defect, desired that the Court
will be pleased to order a Method of Mathematicall Learning to be digested by the joint
advice and approbation not only of some of our ablest masters but of some principall
Commanders and experienced masters of ships, containing an orderly introduction into the
knowledge of soe much of each parte of the Mathematicks, and noe more, as shall be found
usedfull for the children of this Foundation to be instructed in while they remaine in the
Hospitall and furnished with their further direction when sent abroad. And that this Court
would be pleased to desire Sr Jonas Moore Knt with all convenient speed to prepare such a
method for the said children, the which he sometime since promised to doo and is now a poor
feeling. Sr Jonas Moore being present in Court did againe declare that he would with all
convenient speed finish a Method of Mathematicall Learning for the said children. And the
Court desiring to know of him how long he reckoned it would be before the same might be
prepared, he was pleased to answer that he hoped within a fortnights time or thereabouts to
complete the greatest part thereof. The Court by vote agreed with the Comte to this second
remedy.
Defect the 3rd

Noe degree is assigned for the proficiency to which children shall be advanced in their
Latine to qualifie them for their admission into the Mathematicall Schoole, nor any meanes
provided for the retaining what Latine they have when they are removed thither.
Remedy: The degree of Latine to be this, viz the childe with the help of a dictionary
and to translate into English, (and to give a gramaticall account of his soe dooing), Erasmuss
Colloquyes, Ciceros Epistles, and any ordinary mathematicall author writt in that language,
and be able (with the like help only) to translate the same back againe into true grammaticall
Latine.
For the manner of preserving their Latine when in the Mathematicall Schoole they
[Pepys says I] propose:
1. Their being permitted to carry their books away with them out of the Grammar into
the Mathematicall Schoole, and then to have a dictionary or two among them to resort to as
they shall have occasion.
2. To be obliged to nightly exercises in Latine under the examination and correction of
the Grammar Master.
3. And (above all) to have the System of Mathematics now provided by Sr Jonas Moore
translated as soon as may be into Latine, and their lessons both read and performed by them
in that language if the mathematicall master is qualified for it. [Pepys now wrote: As I think
Mr Leake is ..., but this was changed to] And we think Mr Leake is, and his successes ought
from thence forward always to bee, or for want thereof, the Grammar Master in their evening
attendance upon him to bee charged with the exercising them therein.
To which is be added the seeing each, of them supplyed with a Grammar and
dictionary, and two or three small Latine authors besides the forementioned Systeme at their
going to sea. The Court by vote did agree with the Comte to this third remedy. In Pepys
original version, this last sentence was not there.
Defects in the Execution
1st Defect
Confusion between one schoole, and another, and want of attention to the dispatch of
the children through their severall schools.
For the King haveing upon good considerations limitted the stay of the children in his
schoole to sixteen yeares of age, and sundry schooles within that time having to bee passt
through, viz the Reading, Writing, Grammar and Mathematicke, there seemed not to be
sufficient care taken by us for the dispatch of the children through the said schooles, some of
them being found to continue to be eleven, twelve and thirteen yeares of age in the very
Reading Schoole, and much time in like manner spent in the rest, beyond what wee see a
towne schollar (whose friends sollicite his advancement and where the masters interest is
alsoe concerned) does pass through the exercise of every schoole in, while noebody appears
interested in the hasting the proficiency of the house children, but on the contrary their
friends, themselves and the country schoole masters belonging to the Hospitall are found to
performe very ill their duties in forwarding their children in reading before they come into
the house. Nor has the late practice of keeping the said children in a dependanse upon two
schooles at once contributed a little to their loss of time in both.
To which add, that in our endeavour of remedying some part of this error wee have
slipd into another by applying twenty pounds out of the Kings stock, for a use he never
intended to beare the charge of; but expected the continuance of it from the house, namely
the bringing up the children to Writing and Arithmetic, and this done even within the
Mathematicall Schoole too, where nothing but the Mathematicks ought to be taught, while on
the contrary halfe of the forty children are there taught onely to write by one (who though
otherwise diligent) is neither qualified for nor holds himself charged with either the
preserving of their Latine or instructing them in any parte of the Mathematicks which is
expresly required, they should have attained to as farr as the rule of three before they enter
into the Mathematicall Schoole.
Nor is this other ill consequence to be over-looked of the long stay of children in their
respective schooles, namely the rendring the education of one as chargeable, as the breeding
up of two successively within the said time might otherwise bee, but wee seem soe little
concern for such an improvement of our charitie, that children have (as we are told) been
found to read worse after passing some time in the Reading Schoole then when they came
first into it, and done the same yet worse after the like stay in the Writing Schoole than when
they came first out of the Reading.
Remedy (for Defect 1): The Comte think nothing wanting towards the cure of alI the
evills last mentioned, but the haveing a distinct regard to the age at which a child of moderate
capacity may bee fitted to enter into, and the stay requisitte to be allowed him in each
schoole, from the Reading to the Mathematicks, by which it will appear that a very
competent time of stay may be assigned him in each Schoole, and yet the whole be gone
through before his arrivall at sixteen yeares of age, as all the present masters of every
Schoole have agreed may be done:
A Table Shewing the Age at which it is proposed a Child shall enter into, the time he shall
stay in, and the Age at which he shall be fitted to be removed from each Schoole, viz:
At his Entrance into ... Age Stay Age Going
There Thence
The Reading Schoole Yeares 8, or Years 1 Years 9
less (PS
before)
The Writing Schoole, to prepare him for ye 9 9
Latine
The Latine Schoole, to understand Tullys 9 4 14
Epistles or Erasmus Colloquies
The Writing Schoole, to finish his Writing, and 14 14
Arithmetick to the Rule of Three
The Mathematicall Schoole, to be raised to a 14 1 16
proficiency fitting him to be put forth as an
Apprentice
And, as to the present officer that received 20 pound out of the Kings stock for a use
his Majestie never intended to beare the charge off, the said comte for the reasons mentioned
in the defect have agreed that the 20 pound shall now cease and that there shall be noe such
officer for the time to send to teach to writte and cast accounts in the Mathematicall Schoole,
his Majesty expecting that work to be done before the children are to come into the
Mathematicke Schoole. And, whereas it is queried what shall be done with such of his
children as shall happen not to attaine to the proficiency required in their Mathematicall
learning before the age of sixteen yeares, there not appearing any provision on that behalfe in
the constitution, nor directions given the Governors therein.
The Comte conceives the proper answer to bee, that 16 yeares being the age not onely
established by the King but that beyond which a youth ought not to stay longer on shoare
who is designed for the Sea. And it being most evident from the preceeding Table that
nothing but remissness in the master, or incapacity in the schollars, can prevent a youths
arriving timely at the degree of knowledge in Latine and Navigation required from him, there
seemes not any further direction wanting touching the disposall of him (if any such there
would bee) who shall not be quallified as hee ought, at that age, more than that hee is not to
partake of the Kings bounty (10 ch is designed for the benefit of the diligent onely, and the
capable) but must seek his fortune some other way (as the children of the house in other
schooles doo without charge to the King.) And the Court, by vote, agreed with the
Committee to this first remedy and ordered that the aforesaid Table should be observed for
the time to come. This Court by vote agreed with the committee to this first remedy, and
ordered that the aforesaid table should bee observed for the time to come.
2nd Defect
The Comte finds each master complaines of the deficiency of the boys coming from the
preceeding schoole to the great disparagement both of one another and of the whole, Mr
Leeke having said that even some of his have scarcely been able to write or read at their
coming into his schoole which seemes to carry with it not onely an araignment of some or
other of the partiality of our elections but to lay a foundation of constant animosity betweene
the masters.
Remedy (for Defect 2): The master of each Schoole to present to the President and
Governors, at every intended election, the names of the children hee would propose for
advancement to the next subsequent Schoole, the master of which Schoole ought to be at
liberty to examine and except against any child that hee, upon examination, shall judge
deficient in what hee ought to come perfected into him, in presence, and at the determination
of the Comte appointed for the Mathematicall Schoole or any five of them.
And for the more effectuall prevention of partiality in the election to the Mathematicall
Schoole, where the provision for a childs future fortune is become very considerable and
(we observe therefore) much contended for, we would propose that the names of children
double to the number of vacancyes in the Mathematicall Schoole should be offered by the
Grammar master with leave to the children to vie with one another for election by their
exercises in the presence and at the discretion of the Governors, but let it bee here noted that
the considerations to bee regarded in the choices of a boy from the Grammar to the
Mathematicall Schoole are not onely Latin, Writing and Arithmetic, but growth, health, age
and morality. This Court by vote agreed with the Comte to this second remedy.
3rd Defect
Parents and friends are said sometimes to prevail for children being advanced from one
schoole to another before they are fitted for it, and sometimes from the Reading to the
Grammar Schoole without passing the Writing.
Remedy (for Defect 3): To bee strictly prohibited that upon any consideration or by
any sollicitation whatsoever any child bee advanced in any other manner than at publick
election, and according to the rules and times appointed thereto. This Court agreed with the
Committee to this third remedy.
4th Defect
A too great forwardness is sometimes shewne to the passing out of children before they
are fully fitted
1. To the prejudice of the child;
2. Discredit of the Foundation;

3. A defeating of purposes of his Maty.
To which may bee added the sending of children too slightly to the Trinity House by a
Beadle upon the private applications of a master (for self interest) of the Treasurer, Mr Leake
or other particular person, without the direction and notion of the Governors.
Remedy (for Defect 4): To bee strictly enjoyned that noe child be sent to the Trinity
House in order to his being put forth to sea without a letter first directed from the President
and three or more of his Governors inclosing the usuall certificate from Mr Leake of the
proficiency of the child, and that letter delivered by an officer of the Hospitall at the Trinity
House and a time assigned by the Master or Warden of that corporation for the childs
examination. This Court by vote agreed with the Committee to this fourth remedy.
5th Defect
Noe correction given to the Mathematicall boys and soe owned to us by Mr Leake, their
master himself not onely to the tempting them to the neglect of their studye but to the
corrupting them in their manners, and morality witness the misbehavior complained of
against many of them in their neglectfull comportment towards their ancient masters, selling
of their bookes while remaining in the Hospitall, and their more notorious crime of
disdaining to wear their badges, disobedience to command, and even the running away of
one (if not more) from their masters when put forth, to the ruine of the children, dishonour of
the Hospitall, and disappointment to the gratious purposes of his Majesty, correction seeming
to none more necessary than those who are designed for a life of strictest discipline.
Remedy (for Defect 5): The Comte thinks it fit and reasonable that the children be
brought under a constant respect for all their former masters as much as when they were
immediately under them.
That Mr Leake bee let to understand very fully the expectation of the Court in this
particular correction.
For it is the opinion of this Comte that if Mr Leake, the present master, will not give due
correction to the children under his care hee is not fit to bee continued schoole master.
And the Comte is of opinion that if the Mathematicall Schoole Master that now is, or
such as shall hereafter be, will not give due correction to the children under his care, the
same is a sore defect in the government of that Schoole.
It is the opinion of this Comte, that whatever bee the conditions and qualifications of the
Mathematicall Schoole Master, this alwayes to be one that he give due correction to the
children under his charge.
And, that the present Master, and all as shall be, masters for the time to come of the
said schoole shall be obliged to sitt publicly in the said Schoole and not in a private closett
leaving his children at liberty and teaching strangers as has been done.
That the Catechist have it in his charge to beare a particular regard in his place to the
instructing these children in the fear of God, and, as occasion shall call for it, the
admonishing and correcting of them.
And for the better securing of these boyes it may be adviseable to have some meanes
provided of having a true report of their behaviour and improvement after they are putt forth
to apprentice, with a particular regard to that of their continuance in wearing of the Kings
badge wherein the honour both of his Matie and this Hospitall in forrein parts, as well as at
home, is soe much more concerned. Adding alsoe that the same account bee provided for the
finest of our choice in the satisfactory proofe of their Masters.
And, that the Masters of the Trinity House bee desired by this Court that they from time
to time will make inquiry how the Servant doth behave himself toward the Master, and how
the Master uses the Servant, and as they see occasion to informe the Governors thereof. The
Court by vote agreed with the Committee to this fifth remedy.
6th Defect
Number of towne boyes suspected to be too many to every master, and particularly to
the mathematicall. The admitting of it even to any number arming the master with an excuse
for every neglect he shall be charged with towards the house children, urging it as a parte of
his allowed priviledge and profit.
Remedy (for Defect 6): The Comte finds that this defect is of great concerne to the
Hospitall and that it will require some time to consider how to remedy the same. They
resolve not to determine anything herein at this time otherwise then to desire Mr Charles
Doyly against the next Court (if he can conveniently) to draw up a particular of what Towne
children are in every Schoole taught and what wages and other profits every master received
for teaching the house children and what number of them are at present under their care. And
however the Court may do with other schoole masters herein this comte desire the Court to
order that the present mathematick schoole master and such that shall be hereafter be chosen
mathematicall schoole master bee prohibited from teaching any towne schollars in the said
schoole for the time to come. This Court by vote agreed with the Committee to this sixth
remedy.
And upon the motion of Secretary Pepys on the behalf of the present mathematicall
schoole master that they would consider whether his present salaries would be sufficient to
encourage him chearfully and painfully to doe his office as hee ought to doe his towne
scholars being taken from him. This Court by vote desired the Ctte that have taken all their
paines consider the said masters future work and present wages and if they shall find the
said wages not proportionable to the paines he must take then they to make such an addition
thereto as they in their judgement shall think fitt.
7th Defect
Children taken into the Mathematicall Schoole without their parents desire thereof first
had, and their obligation taken that their children (when fitted for it) shall prosecute to the
intent of their education by being sent to sea, which omission is attended with these three
evils:
1. The exposing too much His Majestys bounty and disappointing his Royal intentions
in this his Constitution;
2. The slacking of a childs diligence when imployed on what hee foresees noe use
likely to be made, nor account taken of from him;
3. The misbestowing a chargable and usefull education upon one who does not and
preventing its being imployed upon another who would both esteem and deserve it.
Remedy (for Defect 7): Betweene the election and admission of any child into the
number of the Kings Foundation the friends of the child to make it their solemn desire by
petition that their child may bee soe admitted, with a promissory declaration that hee shall
pursue the purpose of that education in his proceeding to Sea when fitted for it. This Court
agreed with the Committee to this seventh remedy.
8th Defect
The visitations enjoyned by the King have never been executed and the quarterly ones
said to have been formerly practised by the Hospitall disused. To which omission may be
principally imputed the slow proficiencies of the children, through their masters being
thereby not only discharged from what has been always found in the most effectuall caution
agt negligence. Viz. foresight of future visitation but left destitute of their most just and
laudable incitement to diligence namely the having their industries and labours in their
severall places observed and rightly reported to the Governors for their future advantage,
neither of which can bee expected where visitations are wanting.
Remedy (for Defect 8): This Comte have agreed that there shall be a visitation of the
Mathematicall Schoole twice in a yeare (that is to say), 14 dayes before Easter and 14 dayes
before Michaelmas) and that the President and five or more of the Committee appointed to
look after the Mathematicall Schoole to bee present at such visitation and that the examiners
or visitors shall have forty shillings given them for their paines. And that the Clerk of the
Hospitall for the time being bee ordered to put the Comte in mind that the said visitations bee
duely made at the times before named. This Court by vote agreed with the Comte to this
eighth remedy.
9th Defect
Noe method seemed to be sett for the having a good acct kept of the mapps, plats, bookes and
instruments provided at the charge of the Hospitall and its benefactors for the publick use of
the Schoole.
Remedy (for Defect 9): A strict inventory to be taken of what mapps etc. are now in
being and the same from time to time kept up by and lodged with the treasurer whose paying
for them enables him, and him onely, to keep a controll over them, who may alsoe stand
charged with the causing a survey to bee taken of them at every yeare visitation, and
compared with the said inventory, by the visitor by whom the State thereof may be delivered
(with their report of the other matters of their visitation) to the Governors. This Court by vote
agreed with the Comte to this nineth remedy.
10th Defect
The badge is generally omitted to be worne within the Hospitall, and but of late without
it under pretence of the trouble of shifting them smoothly upon their Sunday clothes.
1. To the bereaving his Maty of the honour due to him from them.
2. The interrupting the children in the acknowledgement of their dependency on, and
duty to him.
3. And the presenting of the benefitt and reputation the Foundation might receive from
their being observed abroad.
Remedy (for Defect 10): A double sett of badges (which at ten shillings apiece) will
cost the Hospitall but the interest of twenty pence. And this Court by vote agreed with the
Comte to this tenth remedy.
11th Defect
Noe caution seemed to bee provided nor the care anywhere lodged of seeing the choice
of the Masters for the children when they come to be put forth well made with respect to the
credit, sobriety, and sufficiency of the said masters, the Trinity House having severall times
already taken notice thereof of a dangerous defect.
Remedy (for Defect 11): The Comte agreed that noe child for the future shall bee putt
forth to any master untill three or more of the said committee doe certifie under their hands
that they have made an enquiry after, and are fully satisfied of, the sobriety, trade and fitness
of the Master. The Court by vote agreed with the Committee to this eleventh remedy.
12th Defect
Our omitting the annuall list directed by his Maty to be presented at the end of every
yeare to the Lord Admiral and the principall officers of the Navy containing the number and
names of the children then remaining in the Mathematicall Schoole, with the names and dates
of indenture etc of those at the same time abroad in the Kings charge, by which not onely his
Matys institution is violated and intentions disappointed of having a constant knowledge
lodged with the officers of his Navy and of the number of the persons hereby raised for his
service but our selves presented in the satisfaction the Lord of the Admiralty and the said
officers shall thereby receive and be enabled to give his Maty and Royal Highness in the
fruits of the rare and faithfulness of this Hospitall in the conduct of this his soe eminent
foundation.
Remedy (for Defect 12): That for the future it bee enjoyned as a standing duty upon
the Treasurer of the Hospitall, at the end of every yeare, and before his applications to the
Lord Treasurer for money, to address himself to the President and Governors, that the above-
mentioned list may be in due manner prepared by the Clarke, signed by themselves, and
presented to the Lords of the Admiralty or as his Majesty has directed. This Court agreed
with the Committee to this twelfth remedy.
13th Defect
Lastly, noe care yet taken for perpetuating either the memory or our acknowledgements
of the munificence and charity of our Royall Founder, suitable to our duties therein and our
practice on all other like occasions.
Remedy (for Defect 13): That it be referred to some persons as a committee to
consider and report their opinions touching the fittest method of supplying that defect by
statue, inscription, painting or otherwise as may best express and transmit to posterity the
honour due to his Majesty and the Hospitalls gratitude and piety to his memory for the same.
This Court by vote agreed with the Committee to this last remedy.
Appendix B
Isaac Newtons Comments, in 1694, on the RMS Curriculum
The following correspondence between Isaac Newton and Nathaniel Hawes is

reproduced from Turnbull (1961, pp. 357367)
Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes,(1) May 25, 1694
[From the copy in Christs Hospital Court Book. Reproduced in

Cambridge, UK: Royal Society/Cambridge University Press.]
25 May 1694
For Nathaniel Hawes, Esq:
Sr
I now returne you the papers you left in my hands. The two Schemes(2) of learning I have
compared, and find that the old one wants methodizing & enlarging; the want of method you
may perceive by thee instances.
1. Arithmetick is set down preposterously in the 12th Article after almost all the rest of
Mathematicks. For a man may understand and teach Arithmetick without any other skill in
Mathematicks, as writing Masters usually doe, but without Arithmetick he can be skilled in
no other parte of Mathematicks, & therefore Arithmetick ought to have been set downe in the
very first place as a Foundation of all the rest.
2. The parts of Arithmetick are set down in severall Articles preposterously. For
Decimal Arithmetic and the Extraction of roots are enjoined in the 3rd Article before the
boyes have learnt Arithmetick in integers & vulgar fractions. Then in the 4th and 8th Articles
they are enjoined Logarithms. And after all this they are required in the 12th Article to learn
Arithmetick in generall, as if they had learnt nothing of it before,
3. Geometry and Trigonometry are confounded together in the first Article, and again
in the 4th. Whereas Geometry ought to have made one Artickle and Trigonometry another.
For these are accounted distinct sciences.
4. The use of Logarithms wch is set downe in the 8th Article, ought to have preceded
that of Artificial Sines & Tangents wch is in the 4th. For how can anyone understand the
Logarithms of Sines and Tangents, before he understands the Logarithms of Numbers in
generall?
5. The doctrine of the Globes is set down in the 11th Article and the projection of the
Sphere or globe and making of Maps is set down in the 10th, whereas the doctrine of the
globes ought to precede the projection of the sphere & making of Maps. For how can any
man project the lines of the sphere or globe into Maps, before he is taught what those lines
are?

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
248 Appendix B: Isaac Newton on the RMS Curriculum 1694
6. The 10th Article is worded improperly. For instead of saying, The projection of the
Sphere in circles or globe in a plane divers ways, it should have been said The projection of
the Sphere or globe in circles on a plain diverse wayes, For the projection of a sphere in
circles and that of a Globe in a plain are neither equipollent phrases, nor branches of a
distinction, & therefore cannot be put together disjunctively (as they are in this Article)
without an impropriety of speech.
7. The Rule for finding the Latitude by the Sun or Starrs in the sixth Article, and the
questions of plane Sailing with the use of the plane Sea Chart in the seventh, ought to have
come after the Doctrine of the globes, & the making of Maps or Charts; and yet these are set
after the other in the10th and 11th Articles. Soe alsoe in the second Article, the making of the
Scale of hours, Rumbs and Longitude, is improperly joyned with the Rule of three, & more
imprioperly set before the doctrine of ye Globes. And in generall the whole scheme is soe
confused & immethodical, as makes me think that they who drew it up, had no regard to the
order of the things, but set them downe by chance as they first thought upon them, without
giving themselves the trouble to digest and methodize the heap of things they had collected
together; wch makes me of opinion, that it will not be for the reputation of the Foundation to
continue this scheme any longer without putting it at least into a new forme.
But then for the things it conteins I account it but mean and of small extent. It seems to
comprehend little more than the use of Instruments, and the bare practise of Seaman in their
beaten road, wch a child may easily learn by imitation, as a Parrot does to speak, without
understanding in many cases the reason of what he does; and wch an industrious blockhead,
who can but remember what he has done, may attain to almost as soon as a child of parts, and
he that knows it is not assisted thereby in inventing new things & practises, and correcting
old ones, or in judging of what comes before him: Whereas the Mathematicall children,
being the flower of the Hospitall, are capable of much better learning, & well instructed and
bound out to skilfull Masters, may in time furnish the Nation with a more skilfull sort of
Sailors, Builders of Ships, Architects, Engineers and Mathematicall Artists of all sorts, both
by Sea and Land, than France can at present boast of. The defects of the old scheme you may
understand by these instances.
1. It conteins nothing more of Geometry than what Euclid has in the beginning of his
first book, and in the 10th and 12th propositions of his sixth booke.
2. There is nothing at all of Symbolical Arithmetick, wch tho not requisite in the
vulgar road of Seamen, yet to an inventive Artist may be of good use.
3. The taking of heights and distances, and measuring of planes and solids, is alsoe
wanting, tho of frequent use.
4. Nor is there anything of spherical Trigonometry, tho the foundation of a great many
usefull Problems in Astronomy, Geography and Navigation.
5. Neither is there anything of Sayling according to the severall Hypotheses, nor of
Mercators Chart, nor of computing the way of Ships tho things wch a Sailor ought not to be
igonorant of.
6. The finding of difference of Longitude, Amplitude, Azimuts and variation of the
compass is alsoe omitted, tho these things are very usefull in long voyages, such as those to
the East Indies, and a Mariner who knows them not is an ignorant.
Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, May 25th, 1694 249
7. Nor is there one word of reasoning about force and motion, tho it be the very life and
Soul of Mechanical skill and manual operations, and there is nothing soe Mechanical as the
frame & management of a ship. By these defects its plain that the old scheme wants not only
methodizing, but alsoe an enlargement of the learning. For some of the things here
mentioned to be wanting, are requisite to make a Mariner skilfull in the ordinary road, and
the rest may be often found usefull to such as shall become eminent for skill & ingenuity,
either in Sea affaires, or such other mechanical offices and imployments as the King may
have occasion in his Yards, Docks, Forts, and other places, to intrust them with.
Now the imperfections of the whole scheme are pretty well supplyed in that new one
wch is proposed to be established. For this is methodical, short & comprehensive. It excells
the old one beyond comparison; I have returned it to you, with some few alterations for
making the affinity, coherence and good order of the several parts of the learning, more cleare
and conspicuous, & supplying some defects. The alterations are of noe very great moment,
excepting the addition of the last Article, wch conteins the science of Mechanicks. The rest is
as perfect as I can make it without this Article, whether this should be added may be a
question, but since you concur with me in the affirmative, Ile set down my reasons for the
addition. For without the learning of this Article, a Man cannot be an able and Judicious
Mechanick, & yet the contrivance and management of Ships is almost wholly Mechanical.
Tis true that by good naturall parts some men have a much better knack at Mechanical things
than others, and on that account are sometimes reputed good Mechanicks, but yet without the
learning of this Article, they are soe Farr from being soe, as a Man of a good Geometrical
head, who never learnt the Principles of Geometry, is from being a good Geometer. For
whilst Mechanicks consists in the Doctrine of force and motion, and Geometry is that of
magnitude and figure; he that cant reason about force and motion, and Geometry, is as far
from being a true Mechanick, as he that cant reason about magnitude and figure from being
a Geometer. A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if
he is in error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his
road, he is at a stand; Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure,
force and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub. Experience is necessary, but yet
there is the same difference between a mere practical Mechanick and a rational one, as
between a mere practical Surveyor or Guager and a good Geometer, or between an Empirick
in Physick and a learned and rational Physitian. Let it be therefore onely considered how
Mechanicall the frame of a Ship is, and on what a multitude of forces and motions the whole
business and managemt of it depends. And then let it be further considered whether it be
most for the advantage of Sea affaires that the ablest of our Marriners should be but mere
Empiricks in Navigation, or that they should be alsoe able to reason well about those figures,
forces and motions that are hourly concerned in. And the same may be said in a great
measure of divers other Mechanical employments, as buildings of Ships, Architecture,
Fortification, Engineering. For of what consequence Mechanical skill is in such Mechanical
employments may be known both by the advantage it gave of old to Archimedes in
defending his City against the Romans, by wch he made himself soe famous to all future
ages, and by the advantage the French have above all other Nations in the goodness of their
Engineers. For it is by skill in this Article of learning that Archimedes defended his City.
And tho the French Engineers are short of that great Mechanick, yet by coming nearer to him
then our Artificiers doe, we see how well they fortify and defend their owne Cities, and how
readily they force and conquer those of their Enemies(3). You may consider to what perfection
that Nation by their Schooles for Sea-Officers had lately brought their Navall strength, even
against all disadvantages of nature, and yet your schoole is capable of out-doeing them. For
theirs are a mixture of all sorts of capacities, yours children of the best parts selected out of
a great multitude.
Theirs are young men whose facilities for learning begin to be as stiff and inflexible as
their bones, and whose minds are prepossest & diverted with other things, yours are children
whose parts are Limber and pliable and free to receive all impressions. A great part of their
schools are scarce capable of much better learning than that in your old scheme, yours have
already shewn by experience that they are capable of all the learning in the new one, except
the last Article, wch has not yet been taught them, and yet after they have learnt the rest, will
prove noe harder than that wch they had learnt before. And as your children are a select
Number for parts, and capable of all the learning here proposed, and it will be for the Honour
& advantage of the Nation to introduce a new spirit of usefull learning among the Seamen,
soe it will give your children a higher reputation for preferrment. And I take it to be for the
Honour of both King Charles his memory and of the foundation that this School should be as
learned for Sea affaires as you can well make it; and probably it was his designe and will, it
should be soe, tho all this learning was not started when he founded it. If you admit this
learning your school will certainly grow into greater reputation, & may be thereby more apt
to stir up new Benefactors and set a Precedent of good learning to all future foundations of
the same kind, and if you admit it not, your scheme of learning will be imperfect and leave
roome for future foundations to outstrip yours, wch I believe would not be for its honour. For
the scheme of learning, as I now return it to you is an entire thing wch cannot well want any
of its members, For tis nothing but a combination of Arithmetick, Geometry, Perspective
and Mechanicks, I mean Geometry as well in sphericall surfaces as in plane ones. Geometry is
the foundation of Mechanicks, & Mechanicks the accomplishment and Crown of Geometry,
and both are assisted by Arithmetick for computing and perspective for drawing figures: Soe
that any part of this Systeme being taken away the rest remains imperfect. These considerations
have moved me to propose this Article to you, but perhaps the Governors may see reasons
against it of greater weight wch I am not yet acqted with, & therefore I onely propose this
business and leave it wholly to their prudence.
The Main difficulty that I can think of, is, that the learning of this Article may take up
too much of the childrens time. And yet if for all the rest of their learning they are allowed
(as you tell me) but two yeares & halfe I question not but another halfe yeare would be
abundantly sufficient for this addition, and then they would go to sea with a complete
Scheme of Mathematicall learning. And perhaps it may be more for their advantage to spend
this halfe yeare at schoole in an important part of learning wch they cannot get at Sea, then at
Sea in learning what they will afterwards learn there more readily if well instructed at
School, before they goe thither.
If two Yeares were not at first thought too much for the old scheme of learning wch
(before the addition of the Article of taking prospects) was very mean and narrow; four or
five years for this new scheme would be but a moderate allowance at that reckoning, &
therefore tis very much if they can learn it in three. And yet perhaps they may run through all
the parts of it in two years and an halfe; but not soe well: And I would advise that they
should rather be allowed three full years, then be sent away smatterers in their learning.
But whether they be allowed two yeares & an halfe or three yeares, I conceive the time
of their examination ought to be stated. For the liberty wch the Masters of Ships have had of
taking away the boys sometimes before they had gone through the whole course of their
Mathematical learning, seems to me a mischief wch may deserve a reformation. For the
sending abroad unripe boys can be neither a reputation to the School, nor advantage to the
Nation; Such boyes being not onely less knowing than others, but alsoe less able to make use
of what they have learnt, & more apt to forget it, as smatterers in a Grammar school doe their
Latine.
Nor doe I see how the genius & method of the School is goeing through the whole course
of the Mathematicall learning can be carried on soe evenly and advantageously, as when ye
Mathemll Master shall be at a certainty in the Number of Scholars, & in the time in which he
will make them fit. As the constitution now is you leave a bad Mathematicall Master a liberty
of making excuses whenever he shall prove negligent, & discourage a good one by the
uncertainty of his business & method & of the satisfaction & reputation of bringing his
Schollars to perfection, & alsoe by leaving him exposed to such humours as may desire by
that meanes to take opportunity of hurting him in his business or reputation: whereas its
your interest to make the place as desirable as you can, that when it becomes void you may
have the greater choice of such men as are fittest for it, & encourage them to goe on
cheerfully with their duty. And if it may be for the credit & interest of ye foundation not
onely that the boyes should be well learned, but also that they should be placed abroad with
the best Masters, & the appointing two solemn times every yeare for examining five boys &
binding them out apprentices may draw together a greater choice of good Masters then in the
petty examinations at present. As a Fair draws together a greater Number of Chapmen than
little markets doe: If the giving publick notice of those times may alsoe make the thing more
solemn & more Known to the Nation & thereby conduce the honour of the foundation, &
probably to the stirring up of new Benefactors: I should think the conjunction of soe many
advantages may well deserve an establishment, unless there be some great objection against
wch I am not yet aware of. For you have told me that when the boyes have run through their
course of learning there will be noe danger of their not meeting with Masters at the next
publick examination, and if any of them should then happen to fail of Masters, they would at
all times after that be at liberty to goe with such Masters as could be met with. As for the
Examinations, I should think that the more publick they are, the more the school will
concerned for its reputation, & the greater will be the reputation wch it may get by the good
performance of the boyes. If there be any advantage in publick Examinations, the more
publick they are the greater the advantage; if in private ones the Governors may have it at
their Visitations by able and diligent Examiners wth as much privacy and severity as they
please: And if more such examinations shall upon any occasion be found requisite, yet I
conceive they shall be made onely by Examiners appointed by the Governors, & obliged, soe
soon as the Examination is over to give an account to the Governors, & to noe body else
without their permission, of what ever they find amiss.
When the boyes are sent to Trinity house to be publickly examined perhaps it would
not be amiss that the Mathematical Master send along with them a larger & more particular
draught of the things they have been taught, & are prepared to be examined in, then that scheme
of learning wch you establish, and that the draught of every Master with the alterations from
time to time made in it and the Number of the boyes who at every examination answer well
and readily to the things therein, to be kept upon record in the school as a standard of the
learning wch the boyes are capable of within the time allowed them.
And when the boyes are put out apprentices, they may be exhorted or obliged by the
Governors to communicate to the School (in gratitude to the place of their education) such
accurate observations, curious discoveries and select draughts as they shall make abroad in
their Voyages and Factories for rectifying the longitudes and situation of places in the Maps,
or otherwise, improving Geography, Hydrography, Navigation, the building of Ships, Trade
or any valuable knowledge of remote Nations or Regions. And these or other curiosities
communicated by them may be kept together in a convenient place as an Ornament of the
Schoole to be consulted upon occasions. I have hitherto considered only the Kings
Foundation, and herein I have been free in comparing the old and new schemes of learning,
and speaking my thoughts about them, because, as you told me, it was desired. I hope it will
give noe offence to any body. For at the first founding of the Schoole, the old scheme might
serve very well for a tryall, till it was known what learning such young children might be
capable of. And I presume that the Mathematicians who drew it up, intended for them
nothing more then part of that learning which is taught to persons of riper age in the French
schools, and thought it more advisable to leave the method of things to the Mathematical
Master, then to be accurate in what could not be made perfect. The conjunction of Mr Stones
Foundation with the Kings seems to be well designed: For as both the Honour and Interest of
the Kings Foundation(4) is consulted by making Mr Stones subservient & usefull to it: Soe it
is both for the Honour of Mr Stones Foundation to have this relation to the Kings where
they will be bound out Apprentices with a better allowance. But care should be taken that the
Kings boyes be not retarded in their learning, by joining with them too great a Number of
other boyes of inferior parts, soe as to hinder them from getting through their scheme of
learning within the time limited.
I like well the designe of establishing some Latin Authors to be read in the Schoole,
because the best Mathematicall books are in that language, & by useing the boys to
Mathematicall Latin, they will be enabled to understand them. The Synopsis Algebraica and
Wards Trigonometry(5) are well chosen and soe is Euclides nova methodo in regard of the
short time allowed of the boyes. Yet Euclid himself (suppose in Barrows edition) would do
them more good if it could be compassed within the time, and would be more useful to them
in reading other Authors afterwards. And therefore the Governors may establish, if they think
fit, that the boys read either Euckides nova methodo or else at the discretion of the
Mathematical Master the first six books of Euclides Elements in Barrows edition(6) for plane
Geometry and the 11th and 12th books thereof for Solids. For soe the Mathematical Master
will be at liberty to read the Elements themselves soe soon as he finds he can compass it and
the rest of the scheme within the time limited. As for the Doctrine of the Sphere(7) the first
book of Mercators Astronomy is brief and well adapted to the use of the Schoole and
therefore may be appointed.
And now I have told you my opinion in these things, I will give you Mr Oughtreds, a
Man whose judgment (if any mans) may be safely relyed upon. For he in his book of the
circles of proportion(8), in the end of what he writes about Navigation (page 184) has this
exhortation to Seamen And if, saith he, the Masters of Ships and Pilots will take the pains in
the journals of their Voyages diligently & faithfully to set down in severall columns, not
onely the Rumb they goe on and the measure of the Ships way in degrees, & the observation
of Latitude and variation of their compass; but alsoe their conjectures and reason of their
correction they make of the aberrations they shall find, and the qualities & conditions of their
ship, and the diversities and seasons of the winds, and the secret motions or agitations of the
Seas, when they begin, and how long they continue, how farr they extend & wth what
inequality; and what else they shall observe at Sea worthy consideration, & will be pleased
freely to communicate with Artists, such as are indeed skilfull in the Mathematicks and
lovers & enquirers of the truth: I doubt not but that there shall be inconvenient time, brought to
light many necessary precepts wch may tend to ye perfecting of Navigation, and the help and
safety of such whose Vocations doe inforce them to commit their lives and estates in the vast
Ocean to the providence of God. Thus farr that very good and judicious man Mr Oughtred. I
will add, that if instead of sending the Observation of Seamen to able Mathematicians at
Land, the Land would send able Mathematicans to Sea, it would signify much more to the
improvemt of Navigation and safety of Mens lives and estates on that element.
I hope Sr You will all interpret my freedome in this Letter candidly and pardon what
you may therein think amiss, because I have written it with a good will to your Foundation,
and now I have spoke my thoughts I leave the whole business to the wisdome of your selfe
and the Governors. I am
Honoured Sir
Your most humble & obedient Servant
IS. NEWTON
Cambridge, May 25th 1694.
[Accompanying the above]

A New Scheme(9) of Learning proposed for the Mathematical Boys in Christs Hospital
1. Arithmetick in Integers, Vulgar fractions & Decimals, in Proportional numbers
natural and Artificial, in Symbols of unknown Numbers & in Equations.
2. Geometry, speculative and practical in planes and Solids.
3. The Application of Arithmetick to Geometry in determining and protracting Lines,
Angles and figures by Numbers natural and Artificial, Symbols of Numbers and tables of
Sines & Tangents.
4. The description and properties of figures in perspective with the Arts of drawing and
designing.
5. The use of the best Instruments in working by proportionals taking Angles, heights
and distances, and measuring planes and solids.
6. The Doctrine of the Globes and the Rudiments of Geography Hydrography and
Astronomy.
7. The descriptions of the Globe in perspective commonly called Projections and the
Art of making Charts and Maps.
8. The Doctrine of Spherical Triangles with their application in projecting and
computing all the usefull Problems in Geography, Astronomy and Navigation.
9 A full application of the aforesaid to Navigation particularly to the several
Hypotheses thereof, commonly called Plane, Great circle and Mercators sailing. As alsoe the
use of Charts and Sea Instruments for observation and their application to the finding of the
Latitude, difference of Longitude, Amplitudes, Azimuths and variation of the compass by the
Sun or Starrs, with the knowledge of the Tides and Roman Calender, and the method of
keeping journals and of finding the difference of the Longitudes of Shores by the Eclipses of
Jupiters Satellites.
10. The principles of reasoning about force & motion, particularly about the five
mechanical powers, the stress of ropes and timber, the power of winds, tides, bullets and
bombs, according to their velocity and direction against any plane, the line wch a bullet
describes, the force of weights and springs and the power of fluids to press against immersed
bodies, and bear them up, and to resist their motions; with the application of this learning to
Sea affaires, for contriving well and managing easily, speedily & dexterously, Levers,
Pulleys, Skrews, Anchors, Pumps, Rudders, Guns, Sails and other Tackle, judging truly of
the advantages & disadvantages of Vessells, Havens, Forts, Engins and new Projects, &
observing or discovering what ever tends to make a Ship endure and Sail well, or otherwise
to correct or improve Navigation.
IS. NEWTON.
NOTES
(1) Nathaniel Hawes was Treasurer of Christs Hospital from 1683 to 1699. Eventually
he resigned as a result of a devastating attack by Pepys on the mismanagement of the
Mathematical School (which Pepys rightly looked on as his own child). The Hospital
Committee thereupon asked Pepys to become Treasurer, and the City of London granted him
the freedom of the City to give him a formal qualification for the post, but instead he
preferred to take an office of Vice-President which was created for him because of the
infirmity of the President, Sir John Moore. Hawes then made difficulties about quitting the
house in the school precincts which was always occupied by the Treasurer, and eventually a
Sheriffs order was obtained for his eviction.
(2) Edleston, who published this letter (pp. 279294), has noted: Mr Edward Paget,
Fellow of Trinity College, and Mathematical Master of Christs Hospital, drew up in 1694 a
scheme of reading for the boys under his care. At a meeting of the Committee of the Schools
of the Hospital on the 2nd of May, Mr Hawes, the Treasurer, was desired when he goes to
Cambridge on Friday next to take with him a copy of the old and new schemes, and advise
with the Professor and other Mathematicians in the University concerning them, and get their
opinions in writing which of the two schemes they judge best. Newtons opinion of their
respective merits is conveyed in this letter, which was sent enclosed in another to Paget.
(3) The capture of Mons in 1691, that of Namur in 1692, and of Charleroi in 1693,
were among Vaubans recent triumphs. When Newton wrote the above remarks he probably
little anticipated the example that would be set by that nation to his own country in paying a
tribute to his genius. The Newton in the French steam navy is a corvette of 26 guns, 220
horse power (Edleston, p. 285). See Letter 258, note (2), vol. II, p. 374.
(4) See Letter 258, note (5), vol. II, p. 375.
(5) Seth Ward, Idea Trigonometri demonstrate (1654).
(6) Euclidis elementa (Cambridge, 1655, 2nd ed. 1659).
(7) Although Flamsteeds work on this subject (see Letter 293, note (8), vol. II, p. 450)
had been incorporated in Moores New Systeme of Mathematicksthe text-book designed for
use in Christs Hospitalit was too advanced for the purpose. See p. 368, note (1).
(8) The Circles of Proportion and the Horizontal Instrument (translated into English by
William Forster, 1632), followed by An Addition the Use of the ... Circles of Proportion for
the Working of Nauticall Questions, etc. (1633), from which the above quotation is taken.
The circles of proportion consisted of a circular plate with a movable index, for the
purpose of logarithmic computation, in place of Gunters rulers (see Letter 80, note (3), vol.
I, p. 216).
(9) Pagets scheme with a few alterations by Newton who has also added the final 10th
article.
The following is reproduced from Turnbull (1961, pp. 367368):
453. Isaac Newton to Nathaniel Hawes, May 26, 1694 (from the copy in the Christs
Hospital Court Book. For reply see Letter 455 in Turnbull (1961), p. 371)
[May 26, 1694]
For Nathanll Hawes, Esq
Sr, Yesterfay I sent by the Carryer a Letter to you with the papers you left in our
hands, inclosed in another to Mr. Paget. In that I wrote to you, you will find my thoughts set
downe at large about the old and new schemes of learning. Looking this morning into Sr
Jonas Moores System of Mathematicks(1) wch he composed about 15 or 16 years agoe for
the use of your schoole, I find by the title page and preface to that book, that the new Scheme
was for the most part composed at that time by Sir Jonas. For there (as mentioned in the
preface) he proposes to teach in order these sciences.
1. Arithmetick vulgar, decimal and Logarithmical.
2. Practical Geometry
3. Trigonometry plane and spherical.
4. Cosmography wch includes the Doctrine of the Globes with Astronomy and
Geography.
5. Navigation with the making of Maps.
After these and many Tables and Geographical Maps follow Algebra & speculative
Geometry conteined in the first, 6th, and 11th & 12th books of Euclids Elements. The
difference between this method and the new Scheme of learning now proposed lies in these
things.
1. In the new scheme (as alsoe in the title page to Sr Jonas Moores book) Algebra is
joined with Arithmetick, & speculative Geometry with the practical; wch certainly is the best
method for schollars of good parts who are to learn both. But in the preface to Sr Jonas
Moores book Algebra & speculative Geometry are separated & taught apart after all the
other Sciences; wch is best for a mixture of Schollars of all degrees of parts, some of wch are
not capable of learning the whole Scheme.
2. Sr Jonas joyns plane & spherical Trigonometry together, but in the new scheme
spherical Trigonometry is set after the Doctrine of the Sphere wch is more popular for a
learner.
3. Sr Jonas omits perspective and Mechanicks & referrs the taking heights and
distances & mensuration of planes & solids to the end of practical Geometry and plane
Trigonometry: whereas in the new scheme perspective is inserted between them for
delineating the heights, distances and solids wch are to be measured, & again after ye
doctrine of the Globes for the making of Maps.
This I thought proper to signify to you, that the Governors of the Hospital might have
the judgment of Sr Jonas in this matter. For he follows not ye old scheme in any thing, but
agrees well enough with the new one,(2) both in ye substance of the things he teaches, & in
the order of them, if perspective and Mechanicks be inserted into his Systeme in their proper
places. By Sr Jonas his departing soe much from ye method of the whole scheme, and
supplying some things wch were wanting in it & coming so neare to the new one, you may
gather that the old one is his judgmt wanted information, & that the new one is not much
amiss.
Sr, I am
Your most humble & obedient Servant
IS. NEWTON.
NOTES
(1) Sir Jonas Moore (16171679). See Letter 282, note (15), vol. II, p. 427. The work
referred to is A Systeme of New mathematicks: containing Cosmography, Navigation, the
Doctrine of the Sphere, etc. (2 vols., 1681). It was published posthumously after a completion
of the rest by Flamsteed and Perkins (d. 1680). For the two years until his death the latter had
held the post of Master of Mathematical School at Christs Hospital.
(2) The new scheme with Newtons modification was sent to Wallis and David Gregory
at Oxford, who gave their opinion and advice respecting it in a joint paper, dated 13 June
1694. After a very long debate on 25 June, it was agreed to adopt the new scheme. The
Committee also stated it as their opinion that the 10th Art. in the new scheme about the 5
Mechanical powers cannot be taught under 6 months longer time than is allowed for their
instruction in Mathematics. Also that the Court be desired to request Mr Newton to enlarge
himself upon the aforesaid 10th Art. So that Mr Paget may be the better qualified for their
instruction therein, being very advantageous to the improvement of Navigation. It was at the
same time ordered that humble and hearty thanks be returned to Mr Newton, Drs Wallis &
Gregory for their extraordinary pains & kindness in this affair. A letter of thanks was
accordingly sent on August 9: see Letter 462, p. 390.
For further particulars see Newtons papers (U.L.C. Add. 4005.19) in the Portsmouth
Collection.
Nathaniel Hawes to Isaac Newton, May 29, 1694 257
The following is reproduced from Turnbull (1961, p. 371)

455. Nathaniel Hawes to Isaac Newton, May 29, 1694 (from the original in the
possession of Professor W. E. Karunarathne at Columbo, in Sri Lanka. In reply to
letters 452 and 453 in Turnbull (1961))
Christs Hospital, London, May ye 29th 1694
Most honoured Sr
Your letters and paper, both by the Carrier and post are safe come to hand; wherin you
have taken soe great paines & care, and espressd soe great kindness withal, as could not
have bin expected from anybody of les candour & ingenuity then Mr Newton; nor could
anything less then soe great an advantage to our house and the publique as your advises will
amount to have animated you with soe much courage & patience.
Whereas Sr if my attendance & motion have had any the least share, I cannot but
applaud my hapiness & thought myself obligd highly to take this first opportunity of
expressing the sense I have of the obligation, and of rendering my most harty and humble
thankes.
Tho this Sr is of very small & inconsiderable accompt, if compard with the satisfaction
of your owne mind to have soe greatly contributed to soe useful & beneficial a science; or
with the thankes that are due, and wil most assuredly be renderd you by our General Court
soe soone as an opportunity shal be offerd of communicating your advices by
Most honoured Sr
Your most obliged & most humble Servant
NATH: HAWES.
Appendix C
William Websters Evidence Before the Taunton Royal
Commission, 1865
The Schools Enquiry Commission was conducted in Great Britain in the 1860s, and
was chaired by Henry Labouchere (Lord Taunton), and the Taunton Commissions final
report extensive report was signed and presented to Parliament on December 2nd, 1867
(Willson, 2004, p. 183). The purpose of the Commission was to survey the patchy,
complicated world of hundreds of endowed schools, grammar schools, and proprietary and
private schools (Willson, 2004, p. 183)schools which were natural providers of
education for the increasingly numerous and demanding middle class (Willson, 2004, p.
183).
One such school was Christs Hospital, and the Taunton Commissioners exhaustively
reported on education offerings at Christs Hospital (Hinchliff, 1998). In order to be in a
position to prepare its report, the commissioners interviewed pertinent people (witnesses),
and one of the witnesses interviewed was the Reverend William Webster, M.A (18061870).
Webster was head of the mathematical school at Christs Hospital between 1833 and 1866,
after having previously served for seven years as an assistant master in the mathematical
school at Christs Hospital. Webster appeared before the commissioners, at Christs Hospital.
on June 28th, 1865, and the commissioners asked him to respond verbally to a wide range of
questions. The official typed transcript of the questions asked of Webster, and his answers,
occupied ten pages of small type (Great Britain, 1868b, pp. 776785).
The transcript of the interview with Webster offers an important commentary on what
had happened to RMS during the first 65 years of the nineteenth century, and much of that
transcript will be repeated word for word below. Subheadings (which we have addedthey
were not in the original transcript) have been inserted for the purpose of drawing readers
attention to the main points being considered at particular times.
Websters History as a Teacher at Christs Hospital

8196. (Lord Taunton): I believe you are the head mathematical master of this institution?
Webster: I am.
8197. Are you a graduate of the University of Cambridge?
Webster: I am a Master of Arts of Trinity College, Cambridge. I was twenty-ninth
wrangler.
8198. How long have you held this situation in connexion with this school?
Webster: I am in my thirty-ninth year of service.
8199. Always as a mathematical master?
Webster: Yes
8200. And as head mathematical master?
Webster: No. The first seven years I was junior master, and then I was unanimously
elected head mathematical master.
8201. Have you the uncontrolled management of the mathematical studies?
Webster: Yes, entirely.
8202. Nobody interferes with you in that respect?

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
260 Appendix C: William Webster 1865
Webster: No one.
The Mathematics Department at Christs Hospital Under William Webster

8203. How far do you carry the boys in mathematics?
Webster: I have formerly carried them into their third-years subjects. My highest
wranglers did with me almost the whole of their work here. I have had a second
wrangler, and he read with me nearly to the end of his course. We take them to about
the end of the second years subjects. We are restricted in effect by the competitive
examinations which now take place in the universities, where they do not carry on their
examinations for scholarships beyond the second years subjects.
8204. Is every boy required to read mathematics?
Webster: Every boy in the school who is going to the university, and most of the others.
There are some few boys who never come into the Mathematical School.
RMS boys in the time of William Webster.
8205. Who is it that decides which boys shall or shall not read mathematics?
Webster: We have 5 boys in this school, the sons of naval officers, who come into the
school on the express condition that they shall be educated for sea. As soon as those
boys come up from the Hertford school I see them, or at least I see them at the next
admission, and if they are at all qualified for admission into the school I take them.
Sometimes I find that they are totally disqualified, and I, in the exercise of my
judgment, do not then recommend to the committee that they shall come into the
Mathematical School; but I take in almost all. Then there are others that come whose
parents with them to be educated for sea, and if I find that they are sufficiently qualified
for the school, and that their age will admit of their going through the course, I take
them, their friends first entering into an undertaking that they shall go to sea.
Non-RMS boys studying Mathematics in the time of William Webster.
8206. But take the case of those who have no special qualifications; who is it that determines
with regard to them whether mathematics shall or shall or shall not be taught, and how
far they shall go in them?
Webster: When they get to the Great Erasmus they necessarily learn mathematics.
8207. They are required to learn mathematics?
Webster: They are then required to learn mathematics, but that does not fill up our
number completely; we are required to have 100 to 120 in what we call the Junior
Mathematical Schoolthat is, as distinguished from the naval school, and as
distinguished from the Grecians and Deputy Grecians.
8208. What is taught in the Junior Mathematical School?
Webster: Euclid and algebra, and we sometimes have trigonometry, but not often,
because from those boys, the Deputy Grecians are selected, and they become Deputy
Grecians if they are bright boys before they have completed the Euclid which we
require them to go through.
8209. What is it that determines what portion of time shall be given to mathematical studies
in the case of those boys?
William Websters Evidence to the Royal Commission 1865 261
Webster: With respect to the Grecians and Deputy Grecians that was the subject many
years ago of friendly debate between myself and our late upper grammar master, Dr
Rice. Dr Rice proposed that I should have more time than I then had. I used to have two
half days a week; he himself suggested that I should have a third half day, on this
condition, that on the third half day they should not be required to prepare for me on the
previous nightthat the night should be devoted to exercises for him; that they should
come in on that third half day simply to work problems or examples; and that the
committee acceded to. Dr Rice thought that I had not quite enough time for what was
required at the university, and he himself suggested it to me.
8210. These things, then, are decided by the committee upon the representation of the
master?
Webster: They are so; that was done so.
8211. Do you apprehend that this system works smoothly in giving you a sufficient number
of hours to teach the boys mathematics in the way you think right?
Webster: Yes, I think so; it is nine hours a week.
8212. You are satisfied with that?
Webster: I am satisfied with that time. There are two evenings in the week when they
prepare work for me. The half day they do not prepare work for me, they come in and
work problems in whatever part of mathematics they may be, such as problems in
mechanics or the differential calculus. They do not prepare what we call book work on
the third day.
8213. Is the teaching of arithmetic under your direction?
Webster: The arithmetic is taught in the commercial school except to the boys in the
naval school. I can take the boys into the naval school very early; we want to get them
on as fast as we can. We have got a great deal to do, and I take them in provided I see
that they have fair ability. I give them a very simple examination in the simple rules of
arithmetic, and I see whether they have ability; and if they have, then they come in,
their parents having signed an undertaking that they shall go to sea.
8214. Suppose a boy were to show a remarkable aptitude for mathematical studies, and some
inaptitude for classical studies, would there be any means under the system of this
school of enabling that boy to devote more time to mathematics and less to the classics?
Webster: This has never been done yet. Dr Jacob and I have sometimes debated that
question. I have now one very remarkable junior Grecian, who I am sure is made of the
stuff of which senior wranglers are made. He does not do so brilliantly in the Grammar
School as in the Mathematical School. Dr Jacob and I have sometimes talked it over,
whether we could meet cases of that kind. That boy comes in the same as the rest, only
that Dr Jacob, I believe, is more lenient to him with respect to his classical exercises, as
I am more lenient to some who are doing well with Dr Jacob who do not display a
particular taste for mathematics; still, we do not alter the time.
8215. Would it be in the power of Dr Jacob and yourself, if you agreed upon the point, to
alter the distribution of time with regard to those studies in the case of any particular
boy whom you may jointly be of opinion would profit by such alteration?
Webster: I am quite sure that if we came to the committee with such a case the
committee would immediately sanction what we suggested.
8216. Practically you have never done so?
Webster: No.
8217. Will you allow me to ask you why you have not done so? You have already stated that
there is one case clearly it would be desirable that some such course should be adopted?
Webster: We have talked the matter over, but never in such a way that we have come to
the conclusion that we ought to bring it before the committee.
Mathematics taught to students in the Junior Mathematical School at Christs

Hospital.
8218. (Dr Temple). Can you describe how this Mathematical School is organized? It
contains, you say, 50 naval boys, and I think all who are above the Little Erasmus?
Webster: Yes; and some of the Little Erasmus also. The order of the committee is that
we shall have, in what we call the Junior Mathematical School, from 100 to 120 boys.
8219. And you fill up this Junior Mathematical School from the Little Erasmus?
Webster: From the Little Erasmus, and a few boys from the Latin School.
8220. How do you pick them?
Webster: By communicating with the commercial master, who knows what they do in
arithmetic. We take the best boys after communicating with him. If we thought it right,
we should examine them; there would be no objection to our examining them if we
thought it right. We can depend on his judgment; he is sure to tell us who are the best
boys in arithmetic, and it is from those boys in the Little Erasmus and some from the
Latin School that we fill up our number to the required 100 or 120.
8221. Do the boys from the Little Erasmus go to the Commercial School to learn arithmetic
generally?
Webster: Yes, they do, unless they come to us. I was asked whether we taught
arithmetic; we do not professedly teach arithmetic to those boys, but all in the Junior
Mathematical School once a fortnight give an hour and a half to arithmetic.
8222. How is this Mathematical School organized? How many classes are there?
Webster: The classes vary in number. The Great Erasmus comes as a matter of course;
but many of the boys have already attended the school; and, in fact, the 100 or 120 boys
of whom the School consists are in such various degrees of progress, that we are
compelled to break them up into many classes. Sometimes we have one number of
classes and sometimes another.
8223. How many classes have you at this moment?
Webster: In one respect we have six, but then they are broken up into divisions.
8224. There are six classes broken up into subdivisions?
Webster: Yes.
8225. How many masters have you to teach those six classes?
Webster: They are taught by two masters.
8226. Those two masters teach the six classes?
Webster: Yes, but the classes are not all in at the same time.
8227. This does not include the boys under your own charge?
Webster: No.
8228. How many classes are there under your own charge?
Webster: I have some of the naval boys. We usually call the naval classes orders. The
first three orders or classes I have under my teaching; then the fourth order is under our
second master, and he takes the arithmetic at my particular desire. When we had our
last change, a new master coming, I knew the importance of arithmetic being well
taught, and I asked him, as a personal favour to me, if he would take the arithmetic of
the naval boys, because I know how thoroughly it would be done, and a young comer
might not have done it so well. We talked it over together, and he, because I wished it,
continued to take the arithmetic, and we put the intermediate orders under our junior.
8229. You have three orders and this gentleman has the fourth?
Webster: Yes, and the arithmetic boys. Then there are the three orders under the third
master that come in at different times; he has not these orders all at once.
8230. But at separate times?
Webster: Yes; he has an order, and some of the boys of the Great and Little Erasmus.
8231. Are they not included in the orders?
Webster: No, the orders are the naval boys.
8232. The naval boys only?
Webster; The naval boys only.
8233. There are, I understand, seven orders?
Webster: Eight orders; and sometimes we make nine of them, because the boys in
arithmetic, whom we can regard in one sense as one order, we have now to break up
into two orders, for some are examined this time in the whole of arithmetic, and the
lower part only as far as vulgar fractions.
8234. Then there are these eight or nine orders, and there are also six classes?
Webster: Yes.
8235. Besides that, there are boys under your own charge?
Webster: Besides the first three orders I have the Grecians and Deputy Grecians,
chiefly. The other masters also take part with me in teaching the Grecians and Deputy
Grecians; that is, my second master does so with both, and the third master with the
Deputy Grecians.
8236. The part that principally belongs to you is included in the class called the Grecians and
Deputy Grecians?
Webster: Yes, and the first three orders. The Deputy Grecians, those that are coming up
for the first half year, are not under me; they are under my junior; he has one class of
Deputy Grecians, the lowest; then, my second master has the next class; then in the
third half year, if they are moved up, they come to me. At the present time I have three
classes of Deputy Grecians under my teaching; we call them partings; there are
practically five classes, the lowest parting is under the junior master; the next is under
the second master, and the other three are under myself. At the same time that they
have their partings of Deputy Grecians, they have some of the Great and Little
Erasmus, and some of the orders.
8237. These orders and partings of the Deputy Grecians and some part of the Great and Little
Erasmus, are all together in the School at one moment?
Webster: They are all in the School at the same time and working, and some of course,
are round the master,
8238. Who determines whether a boy is to be promoted from one order to another, from one
class to another class, or from one parting to another parting?
Webster: Myself.
8239. Alone?
Webster: I look at the manner of their passing the examination, I look at the marks they
get, and I listen to what my colleagues say; but I am responsible.
8240. You are responsible, but it is decided by consultation with the other masters?
Webster: Yes. One half year I examine myself, and that examination is a great guide to
me, but I never decide without consulting the other masters.
8241. Who decides what work is to be done in each class?
Webster: The responsibility rests with me. I consult with my juniors, but the
responsibility rests with me.
8242. There is no necessity for your referring anything of that sort to the committee?
Webster: I never do. I never have done so since I have been here, and I have never been
asked to do so.
8243. When you break up the Mathematical School into so many small divisions, does that
imply that they do no not get the full time assigned to mathematics?
Webster: They all have their full time; it is nine hours a week for the Grecians and
Deputy Grecians, and seven hours and a half a week for those in the Junior School who
are promoted in the Grammar School, without regard to the Mathematical School.
Some of the Deputy Grecians are often found fit to join the second parting. I have now
been consulting my colleagues about those whom Dr Jacob has just made Deputy
Grecians. There is the examination; I shall see the marks they get on examination,
returned by the examiner, Professor Hall of Kings College, and until the returns are
made nothing will be positively decided with respect to which parting boys may join. I
am guided very much by the opinion of those who have had the experience of teaching
them. I have great reason to depend on the judgment of my second master, who is one
of the most valuable men that ever entered a school.
8244. Are we to understand that every boy is instructed in mathematics for the full time
assigned to mathematics?
Webster: Yes, according to the time allocated to his class.
8245. Then the boys learn their mathematics in school, I presume?
Webster: They learn some out of school.
8246. All the time assigned to mathematics in school is passed in school learning or saying
mathematics?
Webster: Yes, or working examples. Of course, Euclid is studied and explained, and
algebra is explained, and some work round the masters desk takes place, and a great
deal is done where the boys sit.
8247. At what stage are the boys when they first come to you in your lowest class or order?
What are they capable of doing?
Webster: Are you alluding to the naval school?
8248: The lowest you have got to do with at all?
Webster; The lowest I have to do with at all are the naval boys, because they come into
our school to learn their arithmetic, and the others do not, only we give them once a
fortnight about an hour and a half to keep it up, and to give them a little finish, as from
them will be selected those who go to the university.
8249. Then the boys in the naval school are at the very beginning?
Webster: I should refuse to take a boy if he did not know the multiplication table. My
instructions when I first began were that I was not to take any one in who could not do
the rule of three, but, however, I depart from that and take them lower down. I look to
see whether they are likely to be able to learn, if they know their tables, and can
multiply and divide with tolerable readiness; we do the rest in the Mathematical School,
if we find it not sooner done.
8250. They go to Hertford before coming to you?
Webster: Yes.
8251. (Dr Temple) In what state do you find that they come to you from Hertford; are they
properly prepared?
Webster: Boys sometimes come up as dunces, and not on account of their progress
having reached the age limited for the Hertford school. I have had cases where boys
really could not be taught, but, as a general rule, they do know their tables, and can do
the first simple rules of arithmetic.
8252. Are they fairly prepared in proportion to their ages?
Webster: I should think they are generally.
8253. They know as much as they ought to know for their age?
Webster: When they come as young boys. The others are dunces.
8254. In fact when they do not know so much, is it really the boys own fault?
Webster: I think it is to a great extent.
8255. Is that at about the age of nine generally?
Webster: No, I take them in from 10 to 11, and sometimes at eleven and a half.
8256. Do you find that boys between 10 and 11 are not able to do a common rule of three
sum?
Webster: They will not do it readily; they profess to know how to do it, but give them a
rather trying example and they will go wrong in it.
8257. (Lord Taunton) Do you find a sufficient time is given at the Hertford School to the
study of arithmetic?
Webster: I do not know what time is given to it.
8258. Is there no communication at all between you and those who teach arithmetic at the
Hertford School upon those subjects?
Webster: No, because they are not prepared for the Mathematical School at Hertford;
the boys go from there to the Commercial School, and the connection is between them
and the Commercial School.
8259. Do you believe there is any communication between the Commercial School and the
teaching at Hertford?
Webster: I never put the question and I do not know. I presume they receive a list when
the boys come up, in which it is stated what each boy has been doing at Hertford.
8260. (Mr Acland) Do I understand that the naval boys do not come to you straight from
Hertford?
Webster; No, they go to the Commercial School before I take them.
8261. (Dr Temple) Do they stay any time in the Commercial School?
Webster: If they are fit for me, I take them. I look at their age and whether they can do
those rules in a respectable manner.
8262. (Lord Taunton) Who judges of the fitness of the boys who come into your school?
Webster: I do that entirely. I give them an examination, with the help of Mr Potter, my
second master, in whom I have the greatest confidence. I conduct an examination of
those boys, and then we come to the conclusion which of them are qualified, and which
are not.
8263. You are in friendly communication with him as to those boys?
Webster; Yes, I often ask him, Will you set these boys some examples? and then I
look at what they have done.
8264. Are the physical sciences taught at all at Christs Hospital?
Webster: No.
8265. Do you think it would be advantageous that they should be?
Webster: I think it would not be advantageous to bring them in to break in upon our
present studies. I should not like to have time taken from what we do at present.
8266. Do you think it would not be possible, as is more and more done in schools now, to
combine some instruction in physical science with the other subjects of instruction?
Webster: It might be so, but I do not think that what is taught as physical science in
schools generally brings out much from boys. I think generally they are listening to
lectures which are very interesting; but as for anything to try the mind and to bring out
the powers of the mind, so far as I have understood and heard what has been done, I
think there is not very much which tries the mind as classics and mathematics do.
8267. Does your observation apply more to teaching the sciences by lectures than to teaching
them in the way in which it is now more generally introduced into schools?
Webster: My observation does apply to lectures. I think in what is often called the
physical sciences boys learn certain names; they learn what oxygen is, and so on. They
learn certain names, but I do not think they get very definite ideas.
8268. Are you of opinion that the powers of observation may be developed in a boy by
judicious instruction in physical science?
Webster: That may be so. I cannot say I agree with all I have read about physical
science in connexion with schools.
8269. (Dr Temple) Those who come into the Naval School come at the lowest point to you,
but in the case of those who come from the Little Erasmus, and whom you select in
fact, what is the stage at which they have arrived when they come to you?
Webster: They have gone through their arithmetic.
8270. Have they begun algebra at all?
Webster: No; they do not begin algebra in the Commercial School.
8271. Then I suppose they can work decimal fractions?
Webster: Decimal and vulgar fractions, and the square and cube root. They have gone
through their arithmetic.
8272. You consider them in such a state that they can begin algebra?
Webster: Decidedly. They do begin it the very first day they come in.
8273. Have they learnt no Euclid before they come to you?
Webster: They begin Euclid and algebra together. We divide the time between Euclid
and algebra.
8274. How long, as a general rule, do they stay with you?
Webster; It will depend on the age when they come in.
8275. I mean the average?
Webster: I have some difficulty in answering that question. Some come in between 12
and 13. Of course they have got to remain till 15 in some class or another. Some come
in at 13 and some later. If you were to ask me the average, I should say perhaps they
learn mathematics for a year and a half, as near as I can say.
8276. What do you find that you can bring them to in a year and a half, generally?
Webster: The first half year we generally do as far as surds in algebra, and some quick
boys will do a book in Euclid, but more frequently, perhaps, half a book.
8277. But in a year and a half, how much will they have done?
Webster: Perhaps three, and sometimes four books of Euclid. We have some boys who
are not yet 15, and were examined this time in the sixth and eleventh books of Euclid,
and in algebra to progressions. The second class were examined in the sixth book of
Euclid, and in algebra to quadratic equations.
8278. You have not any of these boys in trigonometry?
Webster: No. The quicker boys have become Deputy Grecians. We have boys under 15
learning trigonometry as Deputy Grecians.
8279. But the Deputy Grecians have become Deputy Grecians by their classics alone?
Webster: Yes; only Dr Jacob, if he thinks right (and sometimes he does) will come and
say, Now I thinking of appointing these boys. Have you any one who is particularly
excellent in mathematics? He did so the other day. He was going to appoint six
Deputy Grecians. He selected the six, but before he definitely decided he brought his
list in to me, and asked me if I could point out any one of a certain number who was
particularly excellent in mathematics, for if so he thought he might be taken on the
Deputy Grecians class. I was nearly suggesting one boy; but I had heard from my
colleagues that he was likely to go into commercial life, and therefore I thought it was
quite as well for him to remain where he was. He was not so good a mathematician that
I should have pressed it on Dr Jacob as being the case of one who was likely to be a
genius in mathematics.
8280. What stage in mathematics have the Deputy Grecians generally reached?
Webster: I am going to have them examined next week. The highest subject of the
Deputy Grecians will be Drews Geometrical Conic Sections, and they will have the
whole course of trigonometry. I use Todhunters Trigonometry with them.
8281. Where have they learnt that?
Webster: They have learnt that with me.
8282. They have learnt that since they became Deputy Grecians?
Webster: Yes.
8283. What is the highest point that they attained on first becoming Deputy Grecians?
Webster: One of those boys who have just been made Deputy Grecians has been
through the sixth book of Euclid. Still, I think it is better for him to join what we call
the second parting, and not the third, and there his Euclid for the first half year will be
four books. He has taken up all the books at once. In the Great and Little Erasmus they
take up portions. When they become Deputy Grecians they take up the whole.
8284. As soon as they become Deputy Grecians they are entitled to stay until 18, are they
not?
Webster: No; every boy must leave at 15, unless Dr Jacob and I agree to recommend
him for an additional year. He then can only stay till 16. Then by the time he is 16 we
have to recommend whether he shall be a probationer or not.
8285. Probationer for what?
Webster: We call the junior Grecians probationers.
8286. They may stay another year supposing they become Grecians?
Webster: We cannot keep more than 12, but may keep 12 probationers.
8287. How many of those 12 become Grecians?
Webster: At the end of a year they are reduced to eight by our recommendation.
8288. And those eight are the only ones that stay on till 18?
Webster: They stay an additional year, and at the end of the next year they are to be
reduced to five.
8289. (Lord Lyttelton) Then there cannot be more than five go in any one year to the
universities?
Webster: From the state of the funds an intimation has been given us that if we like to
keep six for the next year we can do it. If when we come to decide that question, we
think it desirable to keep six, we can do so. According to the rule of the school, five go
with exhibitions to the University.
8290. (Dr Temple) And only five?
Webster: Only five with exhibitions in any one year according to the existing rule.
8291. (Lord Lyttelton) As the practical effect, in no one year can more than five go to the
universities?
Webster: Not with our exhibitions, subject to the observations which I have just made.
8292. But are they allowed to stay long enough in the school to go direct to the universities?
Webster: If they are not chosen for that last year they must leave at the end of the
second year of their Grecianship.
8293. How old are they then?
Webster: They will be generally about 18; between 17 and 18.
8294. How many are there who can stay until they are between 17 and 18?
Webster: Eight; 12, from 16 and 17; the probationer Grecians are 12 if we fill up the
number. Then they are reduced to eight at the end of one year, and at the end of the
second year to five; and those five take our exhibitions.
8295. (Dr, Temple) It appears that you have the freest consultations with your colleagues in
the Mathematical School, but that as far as the arrangement of all the times which are
devoted to subjects is concerned you are subject to a system which was made a good
while ago, before Dr Jacob came to the school?
Webster: Dr Jacob and I have, I think, debated the question. We are not perpetually
changing in such matters, nor thinking of change.
8296. Not only so, but you have not changed at all since Dr Jacob came here?
Webster: Not with respect to the time devoted to mathematics by the Grecians and
Deputy Grecians. We have had the mathematical instruction extended and more taught.
We have had the system altered with respect to what we call the Junior Mathematical
School.
8297. How was that altered?
Webster: It was altered by general consultation and a submission to the committee. As
to who was particularly responsible for it, I cannot say. I was consulted by a good many
of the masters. We had a general consultation then. It was at a time when, from a very
unfortunate occurrence, Dr Jacob was not so friendly with us as we ought always to
have been. Whether it was our fault, or Dr Jacobs, I do not wish to discuss, but it was a
fact that we were not on those terms that we ought to have been, and on which I think
we now are.
8298. Then this alteration was suggested by the masters?
Webster: To a great extent. I think it was more suggested by the masters than anyone else.
8299. The masters brought up a new scheme and submitted it to the committee?
Webster: I really do not recollect how it was done. There was a consultation. I was
asked my opinion with respect to the mathematics, and I gave my opinion.
8300. Who asked your opinion?
Webster: There were a great many masters consulted together; I should think I talked
the matter over with Dr Jacob, although we were not then on those terms that I would
have liked.
8301. (Dr Storrar) Do your naval boys learn classics at all?
Webster: Yes; they go in the classics school almost as much as the other boys. They
lose a little; I think they lose one lesson a week. They are not quite half their time in the
Grammar School. The general rule is that half the time shall be devoted to classics and
half to other subjects. That rule is departed from to a certain extent with respect to the
naval boys, to give them more time in the Mathematical School, but they learn with the
other classes, only they perhaps are not so likely to be promoted at the end of the half
year.
8302. Do you carry any boys far in mathematics who have learned very little or so classics?
Webster: Some naval boys, whilst doing very creditably in mathematics, make little
progress in classics.
8303. My object is to ascertain from you, if possible, whether you consider that classical
studies are of service in preparing the intellect of a boy for mathematical studies?
Webster: I certainly think they are. I like the combination of the two for all boys. I think
you would not bring out a boys mind if you were to let him devote all his time
exclusively to mathematics. I should not like it at all. It is only in the last year and a
half that the first three orders leave the Grammar School, and they learn French; but
they cease to learn Greek and Latin. I should be very sorry indeed to have the naval
boys altogether give up their classics.
8304. My question rather went to this, not as to whether you would wish boys to give up
classics in order to prosecute mathematics, but whether you thought for the purposes of
mathematical study it was an advantage for boys to have some previous training in
classics?
Webster: I think it is so for all boys. I should be exceedingly sorry to see classics
dropped. I should think the boy would be very defectively taught indeed, and that he
would not do his mathematics so well. With reference to the naval boys, I said they
learn French; I should have added that they learn drawing in common with a large
number of other boys, and chart-drawing in connexion with their intended going to sea.
8305. (Mr Acland) Under whose superintendence?
Webster: Under that of the drawing master.
8306. Not under your superintendence?
Webster: Not under my own superintendence. Chart-drawing is of great value to these
boys.
Appendix D
The Intended Christs Hospital Mathematics Curriculum
in the Mid-1860s
Reference: Great Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII, General Reports
of the Assistant Commissioners (pp. 437454). London, UK: Author.
Note that three of the tables in Appendix D (2, 4, and 8) are also included in Chapter 8
(as Tables 8.1, 8.2 and 8.3 respectively).
1. Excerpts from Mr Fearons Report Relating to Mathematics Classes at Christs
Hospital, 1866. Program for the Rev. Dr Jacobs Upper Grammar School Grecians
(p. 437)
DAYS HOURS A.M. HOURS P.M.

9-10 10-11 11-12 2-3 3-4 4-5 7-8 8-9
Monday Repetition Herodotus Horace Latin Verses

English Bible
Tuesday In the Mathematical School Virgil or English or Latin

Lucretius, &c Essay, &c
Wednesday Repetition. Paleys Homer Half Holiday* Greek Iambics

Evidences
Thursday Repetition. Greek schylus Livy

Testament Prom.
Vinct,
Friday Grecian History Greek or Latin Prose

In the Mathematical School
Saturday Half-holiday
* The second Wednesday in the month is generally a holiday throughout the Hospitals schools
List of books, or portions of books, proposed to be studied by the above-named class, during the
English Bible, 1 Samuel. Paleys Evidences, a small portion from the beginning. Greek
Testament (ed. Bloom, small), St. Lukes Gospel, from Ch. 1. Herodotus, B. I # 26, a small ed.
Without notes. Homer, II, xxiii, line 400, a small ed. without notes. sch., Prom. Vinct. Ed.
Oxford Pocket Classics, with short notes. Horacem Ars Poet., ed. Anthon, or small ed. with
short notes. Virgil, n, ed. I, ed. Griffin, with notes, Livy, xxi, #20, ed. Hunter, or small ed.
with short notes.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
272 Appendix D: Christs Hospital Mathematics Classes, Mid-1860s
2. Excerpts from Mr Fearons proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the
Classes named Grecians (Four Partings) and Deputy Grecians (Four Partings), under
the Rev. T. J. Potter, M.A., Head Mathematical Master, During the Quarter
Commencing January 18, 1866. (Great Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission,
Vol. VII, General Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, p. 446)
DAYS HOURS A.M. HOURS P.M. EVENING

9 to 12 2 to 5
Monday (Deputy Grecians) (Deputy Grecians) Grecians prepare

book work for the
1. Analytic conics and Trigonometry Same as for the
following morning.
morning 9 to 12
2. Trigonometry and Conics
topics.
3. Trigonometry
4. Euclid, Books VI XI; Algebra
Tuesday (Grecians) (Deputy Grecians)
1. Conics, Differential Calculus 1. Analytical Conics
with Mr Bowker
2. Dynamics
2. Algebra
3. Analytical Conics
3. Algebra
4. Algebra
Deputy Grecians
Wednesday prepare book work.
As on Monday
Thursday As on Monday evening.
Friday As on Tuesday
Saturday 1. As on Monday 1. As on Monday As on Wednesday
evening.
2. Statics 2. Statics
3. As on Monday 3. As on Monday
4. Conics with Mr Bowker 4. Conics with Mr
Bowker
5. Conics with Mr Bowker
5. Conics with Mr
Bowker
List of books or portions of books proposed to be studied by the above-named class during the
half-year commencing January 18, 1866:
Euclid; Potts. Algebra; Hall, Wood, Todhunter. Trigonometry; Besley, Todhunter. Geometry,
Conic Sections; Drew. Analytical Conic Sections; Todhunter, Salmon. Differential Calculus;
Hall, Todhunter
Mechanics; Parkinson, Walton (Problems)
Christs Hospital Curriculum, Mid-1860s 273
3. Mr Fearons Report on Mathematics Classes at Christs Hospital, 1866. Program for

the Rev. Dr Jacobs Class or Form Named Deputy Grecians Under the Rev. Dr Jacob
and Mr Hooper, During the Quarter Commencing January the 18th, 1866 (Great Britain.
(1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII, General Reports of the Assistant
Commissioners, p. 437)

9-10 10-11 11-12 2-3 3-4 4-5 7-8 8-9
Monday In the Mathematical School Latin Grammar Latin Verses

and Cicero, Latin
Prose,
Composition
Tuesday Repetition, Greek In the Latin Verses

Grammar Greek Test Mathematical
and Scriptures Grci School
Wednesday Repetition, Greek Half- Mathematical

Grammar Bushbys Holiday Work Prepared
and Homer
Introduction
Thursday In the Mathematical School Latin Grammar English or Latin

and Virgil Theme
Friday Repetition, Greek Geography and Greek Iambics

Grammar English Bible History of
and Hecuba Greece; Greek
Prose and
Composition
Saturday Repetition, Latin Half- Mathematical

Grammar and Horace Holiday Work Prepared
Greek Test
List of books, or portions of Books, proposed to be studied in the above-named class during the
English Bible, 1 Samuel, Bushbys Introduction, ch. Ii. Greek Test, St. Matthew, xiii, ed.
Bloomfield, small. Scriptures Grci, Lucian, Div. 1. Scriptures Grci, Xenophon, Div. 2.
Homer, II, iii, 400, Arnolds small ed. Hecuba, small ed. With short notes, beginning time 3t50.
Horace, Sat, B. 1, 7, Div. 1 small ed. with short notes. Horace, Odes, I, 1, Div. 2, small ed. with
short notes. Virgil, n, ii, 200.Cicero, in Cat. Iv.
4. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Naval Classes Named Orders
of the Royal Mathematical School, Under the Rev. T. J. Potter, M. A., Head
Mathematical Master, During the Quarter Commencing January 18, 1866 (Great
Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII, General Reports of the Assistant
DAYS ORDER HOURS A.M. ORDER HOURS P.M.
Monday 1 910.30 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 25 Scripture History, Trig., &c
2 9 10.30 gation, Nautical As- 2 25 Scripture History, Trig., &c
3 910.30 tronomy 3 25 Scripture History, Trig., &c
8* 10.3012 Arithmetic 8* 25 Arithmetic
Tuesday 1 912 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 3.305 Trigonometry, Navi-
3 910.30 tronomy 3 25 tronomy
Wednesday 1 912 Trigonometry, Navi- 1
2 912 gation, Nautical As- 2
3 910.30 tronomy 3
8* 10.3012 Arithmetic 8*
Thursday 1 912 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 25 Trigonometry, Navi-
3 912 tronomy 3 25 tronomy
Friday 1 910.30 Trigonometry, Navi- 1 3.305 Arithmetic & Algebra
2 910.30 gation, Nautical As- 2 25 Arithmetic & Algebra
3 910.30 tronomy 3 25 Arithmetic & Algebra
8* 10.3012 Arithmetic 8* 23.30 Arithmetic
Saturday 1 912 Arithmetic and Algebra
2 910.30
3 912 Arithmetic and Algebra
8* 912 Arithmetic and Algebra
The first three orders prepare every evening a lesson in Trigonometry or Astronomy; the 8th
order work Arithmetic.
* The intermediate orders are instructed by the Rev. H. C. Bowker and Mr Carlos. The 8th order
attend in two divisions, one part in the morning and the other in the afternoon, by alternate
weeks.
List of books, or portions of books, prepared to be studied by the above-named class during the
Arithmetic; Colensus. Algebra; Hall, Coleman; Trigonometry; Hall, Jeans (Part I). Outline of
Astronomy; Hall. Navigation and Nautical Astronomy: Riddle, Jeans, Inman. Scripture History;
Watts.
5. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Forms Names Deputy Grecians
(Parting 5) and Naval School (Order IV), Under the Rev. H. C. Bowker, B. A., Second
Mathematical Master, During the Half-Year Commencing January 18, 1866 (Great
DAYS GROUP HOURS A.M. GROUP AND HOURS P.M.

AND TIME
9 to 12 TIME 2 to 4 8 to 9
Monday D.G. 5 Euclid and Ord. IV, Trigonometry,
The Deputy Grecians 6 prepare Euclid and riders and the 4th Order
Algebra,
Ord IV, 3.30 5 &c
Trigonometry,
9 10.30
&c
Tuesday Ord. IV, Trigonometry, D.G. 5 Algebra,
prepare Trigonometry, &c. overnight.

9 11 &c Ord IV, Trigonometry, &c
24
Wednesday Ord. IV, Trigonometry,

9 10.30 &c
Thursday D.G. 5 Euclid and Ord. IV, Trigonometry,

Algebra,
Ord IV 3.30 5 &c
Trigonometry,
&c
Friday Ord. IV, Trigonometry, Ord IV, Trigonometry,

9 10.30 &c 24 &c
Saturday Ord. IV Trigonometry,

&c
List of books, or portions of books, prepared to be studied by the above-named class during the
Deputy Grecians, parting 5:Euclid IIV; Algebra to progressions; Riders on Euclid IIV;
Potts Euclid, 1864; Woods Algebra by Lund, 1861, Halls Algebra.
Order IV:Trigonometry to heights and distances; Euclid XI, Algebra, Plane Sailing; Halls
Trigonometry; Jeans Trigonometry, Part I; Potts Euclid; Inmans Tables; Riddles Navigation.
N.B. The Deputy Grecians attend invariably Monday and Thursday, 912, Tuesday, 25. The
6th Order attend in the morning one week, and in the afternoon, the next. Thus, this paper
represents the time devoted to mathematics by the 4th order during a fortnight.
6. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Classes or Forms Named Lower
Mathematical School, Under the Rev. H. C. Bowker, B. A., Second Mathematical
Master, During the Quarter Commencing January 18, 1866 (Great Britain. (1868a).
Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII, General Reports of the Assistant Commissioners,
p. 449)
DAYS SECTION, HOURS A.M. SECTION, HOURS A.M.

DIVISION DIVISION
910.30 10.3012 23.30 3.305
Monday Div.1, Sec. A Euclid Algebra Div.I1, Sec. A Euclid Algebra
Tuesday Div.1, Sec. B Euclid Algebra Div.I1, Sec. B Euclid Algebra
Wednesday Div.1, Sec. A Euclid Algebra
Thursday Div.1, Sec. B Euclid Algebra Div.I1, Sec. A Euclid Algebra
Friday Div.1, Sec. A Euclid Arithmetic Div.1I, Sec. B Euclid Arithmetic
Saturday Div.1, Sec. B Euclid Algebra
A lesson in Euclid is prepared in the evening.

List of books, or portions of books, proposed to be studied by the above-named classes during
the half year commencing January 18, 1866:
Div. I and II, Sect. A, Class iEuclid vi;, Algebra; Potts Euclid, ed. 1864
Div. i, Section A, Class iiEuclid I, 2748; algebra to quadratic equations
Div. i, Section BEuclid i, 126; algebra to evolution
Div, ii, Section AEuclid i, 2741; ii; algebra to quadratic equations
Div, ii, Section BEuclid I, 126; algebra to evolution
Potts Euclid, ed. 1863; Halls Algebra; Colensos Algebra, Part I, ed. 1862; Colensos
Arithmetic.
7. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Forms Named Deputy Grecians
(Parting VI) and Orders V, VI, and VII of the Royal Mathematical School, Under E. S.
Carlos, B. A., Second Mathematical Master, During the Half-Year Commencing
January 18, 1866 (Great Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII, p. 449)
DAYS GROUP TIME HOURS A.M. GROUP HOURS P.M.
9 to 12 2 to 5
Monday D.G. 912 Euclid & Alg,
Ord V 1012 Euclid & Arith Ord V 24 Euclid & Arith
Ord VI 1012 Euclid & Arith Ord. VI 24 Euclid & Arith
Ord VII 10.3012 Euclid & Arith Ord. VII 23.30 Euclid
Tuesday D.G. 25 Algebra

Ord V 10.3012 Euclid & Algebra Ord V 23.30 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VI 10.3012 Euclid & Algebra Ord. VI 23.30 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VII 912 Euclid Ord. VII 24 Euclid & Arith
Wednesday Ord V 912 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VI 1012 Euclid & Alg.
Ord VII 10.3012 Euclid

Thursday D.G. 912 Euclid & Alg,

Ord V 10.3012 Euclid & Alg Ord V 25 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VI 10.3012 Euclid & Alg Ord. VI 25 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VII 912 Euclid & Arith Ord. VII 23.30 Euclid
Friday Ord V 912 Euclid & Alg Ord V 23.30 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VI 912 Euclid & Alg Ord VI 23.30 Euclid & Algebra
Ord VII 10.3012 Euclid Ord VII 25 Euclid
Saturday Ord V, 912 Euclid & Alg

Ord VI 912 Euclid & Alg
Ord VII 10.3012 Euclid
A lesson in Euclid is prepared in the evening.

Deputy Grecians, Parting 6: Euclid, i, ii, iii; Algebra as far as equations. Order V, Euclid vi,
Algebra to quadratic equations; Order VI, Euclid ii, iii, Algebra to Evolution; Order vii, Euclid i,
Arithmetic; Potts Euclid, Woods Algebra, Halls Algebra, Colensos Algebra, Colensos
Arithmetic, Halls Arith
8. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Classes or Forms Named Lower
Mathematical School, Under E. S. Carlos, B. A., During the Quarter Commencing
January 18, 1866 (Great Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII,
General Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, p. 449)
HOURS A.M. HOURS P.M.

DAYS SECTION SECTION
910.30 10.3012 23.30 3.305
Division 1 Division 2
A lesson in Euclid is prepared in the evening

Monday A, classes Euclid Algebra A
i, ii
Tuesday B Euclid Algebra B Euclid Algebra
Wednesday A Euclid Algebra
Thursday B Euclid Algebra A Euclid Algebra
Friday A Euclid Algebra B Euclid Algebra
Saturday B Euclid Algebra
Div. i and Div. ii attend form 9 to 12, and from 2 to 5 alternate weeks. This represents the
arrangement for one week. The next week Div. ii would attend in the morning from 9 to 12, and
Div. i from 2 to 5.
Div. i, Sect. A, Class 1Euclid iii, Algebra as far as progressions
Div. i, Section A, Class iiEuclid i, 2748; algebra to quadratic equations
Div. i, Section BEuclid i, 126; algebra to evolution
Div, ii, Section AEuclid i, 2741; ii; algebra to quadratic equations
Div, ii, Section BEuclid i, 126; algebra to evolution
Potts Euclid, ed. 1863; Halls Algebra; Colensos Algebra, Part I, ed. 1862; Colensos
Arithmetic.
9. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Class or Form Under Mr F. Sykes,
Assistant Commercial Master, During the Quarter Commencing January 18, 1866 (Great

910.30 10.3012 23.30 3.305
Monday A 1st Division B 1st Division A 2nd Division B 2nd Division
Tuesday B 1st Division C 1st Division B 2nd Division C 2nd Division
Wednesday C 1st Division A 1st Division Half-Holiday
Thursday A 1st Division B 1st Division C 2nd Division A 2nd Division
Friday B 1st Division C 1st Division A 2nd Division B 2nd Division
Saturday C 1st Division A 1st Division Half-Holiday
Proportion, Practice, Interest, Commission, Brokerage, Insurance, Vulgar and Decimal
Fractions, Square and Cube Root, and the two A Sections; Duodecimals and Stocks in addition
to the above. A small portion of time devoted to Writing. Colensos and Huttons Arithmetic.
10. Proposed Arrangement of Time for the Study of the Class or Form Under Mr J. F. B.
Sharpe, Junior Assistant Commercial Master, During the Quarter Commencing January 18,
1866 (Great Britain. (1868a). Schools Inquiry Commission, Vol. VII, General Reports of
the Assistant Commissioners, p. 444)

910.30 10.3012 23.30 3.305
Monday A 1st Division B 1st Division A 2nd Division B 2nd Division
Tuesday B 1st Division A 1st Division B 2nd Division C 2nd Division
Wednesday A 1st Division B 1st Division Half-Holiday
Thursday B 1st Division A 1st Division C 2nd Division A 2nd Division
Friday A 1st Division B 1st Division A 2nd Division B 2nd Division
Saturday B 1st Division A 1st Division Half-Holiday
Proportion, Practice, Tare and Tret, Simple Interest, Commission, Brokerage, Insurance, and
lower rates for Section B, 1 and 2. A SectionsVulgar Fractions in addition to the above.
Duodecimals and Stocks in addition to the above. Two hours per week devoted to Writing in
each Section. Colensos Arithmetic.
Appendix E
Responding to Reviewers
In his history of the Royal Mathematical School, Clifford Jones (2015) devoted 17
pages to summarizing and discussing handwritten texts prepared by RMS students between
1755 and 1858. He introduced those pages with the following passage:
The workbooks of the pupils of the Royal Mathematical School from about 1755
to 1858 were heavy, strongly bound and usually taken to sea when the boys joined
their ships. Some manuscripts have been returned to Christs Hospital. Others are
at the National Maritime Museum or in private collections. The content varies
according to the syllabus being followed at the appropriate date. ... I have so far
located fifty-three workbooks ... There is no evidence that similar manuscripts
were prepared at earlier or later dates, so if ten boys left the School each year
between 1758 and 1858 there would have been only about 1000 of these
workbooks ever prepared. (p. 304)
Jones then provided summary details relating to the 53 extant RMS workbooks that he had
either examined himself or had had brought to his attention.
Jones (2015) seemed to assume that all RMS workbooks were based on John
Robertsons text The Elements of Navigation, and reasoned that since the first edition of that
book was published in 1754 it followed that no RMS workbook was prepared before 1755.
However, in Chapter 5 of this book we provide strong evidence that handwritten
workbooks were prepared by RMS students well before 1755. After examining a
substantial workbook attributed to RMS student John Cox, held at the National Maritime
Museum at Greenwich, we concluded that, despite Jones (2015) comment that this
manuscript may actually have been the work of a later pupil (p. 304), there can be no doubt
that that manuscript was, in fact, prepared in 1723. Furthermore, in December 2015 we
found, in the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, a workbook prepared in 1718 by
RMS student James Battertonfive years before Cox prepared his manuscript. Battertons
(1718) and Coxs (1723) manuscripts were very similar in extent, structure, and appearance.
After having analyzed minutes of the General Court and the Committee of Almoners
for the period 16731755 we have concluded that navigation cyphering books were
prepared by RMS boys from 1682 onwards, and probably even before then. In Chapter 5 we
described how, in 1691, Edward Paget, the RMS master at the time, was commended by the
General Court for having had his students, over the previous eight years, prepare drafts of
pages which were be shown, on an annual basis, to the reigning monarch. This practice was
commemorated in two major paintings completed by Antonio Verrio in the 1680s (Blanch,
1877). In Chapter 5, we concluded that almost from RMSs beginnings, and perhaps even
from the beginning, the cyphering tradition exerted an important controlling influence over
RMSs implemented curriculum. Also, we conjectured that such was the reputation of RMS
that the Christs Hospital form of cyphering helped shape the cyphering tradition which
continued to develop in Great Britain during the eighteenth century and well into the
nineteenth century.

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
282 Appendix E: Responding to Reviewers
We have written much about the cyphering tradition. In 2013, Amy Ackerberg-
Hastings, in reviewing the Ellerton-Clements (2012) book, Rewriting the History of School
Mathematics in North America 16071861: The Central Role of Cyphering Books, did not
accept our contention that that book made substantial, and new, contributions to the history
of school mathematics in North America. From our perspective, Rewriting the History was
the first book ever seriously to take account of a significant number of extant North
American cyphering books, and we thought that our analyses cast new light on how
mathematics was taught and learned in North American schools before 1861. Like Lao
Genevra Simons (1936), we believe that what students wrote in their cyphering books
provided unmistakable evidence relating to much of what those students did when they were
trying to learn mathematics. In Rewriting the History we not only took account of
manuscripts and books in the Ellerton-Clements collection, but also of manuscripts and
books in major archival collections across the United States of America.
In Rewriting the History we carefully defined what we meant by the term cyphering
book (Ellerton & Clements, 2012, pp. 34), and took painssee pages 88 through 91to
discuss the issue of whether the cyphering books that we had examined might be regarded as
representative of cyphering books which were prepared by North American school children
between 1701 and 1861. We included a 27-page appendix in which we summarized each of
the 212 North American cyphering books which were in the EllertonClements collection at
the time when we wrote Rewriting the History, and argued that although it was obviously
unlikely that the Ellerton-Clements collection was absolutely representative, it could
reasonably be concluded that the manuscripts in the collection were more representative of
all North American cyphering books than any other set of extant cyphering books.
Late in 2015, our thesis regarding the extent of influence of the cyphering tradition on
the history of school mathematics was further challenged by Alexander Karp, then managing
editor of the now discontinued International Journal for the History of Mathematics
Educationthe journal in which Ackerberg-Hastings (2013) review had appeared. Karp
(2015) took the opportunity to use the final issue of the journal to review Ellerton and
Clementss (2014) Abraham Lincolns Cyphering Book and Ten Other Extraordinary
Cyphering Books and Clements and Ellertons (2015) Thomas Jefferson and his Decimals
17751810: Neglected Years in the History of U.S. School Mathematics. He stated that points
made by Ackerberg-Hastings (2013) in her review of Rewriting the History of School
Mathematics in North America 16071861 seemed to apply to those two books as well.
Karp (2015) challenged our central premise that the most important evidence for
studying implemented curricula for school mathematics in North America in the eighteenth
century and for much of the nineteenth century is to be found in extant cyphering books.
Without referring to our tight definition of a cyphering book he wondered whether the
books of notes (p. 134) that he had prepared when he attended school in Russia were
cyphering books. He also questioned whether the cyphering books that we had examined
were representative of all cyphering books prepared by North American school students in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After referring to us as collectors, he contrasted
collectors with historians. He repeated an argument presented by Ackerberg-Hastings (2013)
that we had over-emphasized the role of cyphering books, and that in eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century school mathematics, direct teaching and commercially-prepared textbooks
were as important as cyphering books so far as implemented curricula were concerned.
Rewriting the History of School Mathematics 283
We have argued that conclusions reached by scholars who have written about the
history of school mathematics but have not taken due account of the cyphering tradition
might need to be reconsidered. There is nothing that Ackerberg-Hastings and Karp said in
their reviews which has caused us to revise our views on that issue. That said, Karps claim
that we have given cyphering-book evidence priority over other evidence is partly rightwe
do believe that if the aim is to describe and analyze the development of implemented
curricula then, of all available forms of evidence, cyphering-book evidence is the richest.
Karps (2015) contention that most writers on mathematics education history have been
aware of the absence of whole-class teaching of mathematics in seventeenth-, eighteenth-,
and early nineteenth-century schools, but have not mentioned it because it is so-well known
that it can be assumed to have been true is, from our perspective, not only defensive and
reactionary, but also incorrect.
Karp (2015) also alleged that we did not adequately discuss general methodological
issues (p. 134), and questioned why, so far as our analyses of cyphering books were
concerned, the year 1880 is chosen as a cut-off date (p. 134).
Publication of the International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education has
now ceased, and we regret that we were never invited, or otherwise given the opportunity, to
reply to Karps (2015) review in that Journal. Upon reflection, we decided to include this
Appendix because we were concerned about the possibility that readers of this book might
become aware of either or both of the Ackerberg-Hastings (2013) and Karp (2015) reviews
and begin to wonder whether criticisms of our recent work should raise questions about the
quality of the analyses in this book. At stake is whether readers can trust the methodologies
we have used, and the conclusions we have reached.
We have decided to respond to the criticisms in point-form.
Both of us have been studying and writing about the history of school mathematics
for more than 25 years. Thus, for example, in 1988 the following article was
published in a special issue commemorating 200 years of European settlement in
Australia:
Ellerton, N. F., & Clements, M. A. (1988). Reshaping school mathematics in
Australia 17881988. Australian Journal of Education, 32(3), 387405.
This article would later be republished (Leder & Forgasz, 2007) in an edited
collection of significant papers written by Australian mathematics educators.
We have had many peer-reviewed articles and books on the history of school
mathematics published, and feel that our record of publication in well-regarded
outlets takes us beyond being regarded merely as collectors. Furthermore, we feel
that it is unfair that we have to defend ourselves on this matter.
That said, we do own the worlds largest collection of extant cyphering books, and
that collection includes three RMS navigation cyphering books. In addition, we also
own about 2500 old mathematics textbooks, and many other historical publications
and artefacts that relate to mathematics education.
Whereas, as far as we know, Alexander Karp has not examined, analyzed, or
written about cyphering books, we have examined about 1500 extant cyphering
books and can assure readers that we are thoroughly familiar with the genre. We
have no trouble determining whether a handwritten manuscript is consistent with
our definition of a cyphering book. We still find it amazing that we have never seen
a North American cyphering book which was prepared after 1861. In addition to the
450 North American cyphering books now in our collection we now have about 135
British cyphering books, and the youngest of those were prepared in the 1890s.
We can assure Alexander Karp that, unless the cyphering tradition lingered much
longer in his homeland, Russia, than it did in North America or Great Britain then
the books of notes he prepared as a schoolboy should not be regarded as
cyphering book.
We would also add that In Rewriting the History of School Mathematics we
examined why the cyphering era closed so abruptly in the United States of America
during the 1850s and 1860s (see Ellerton and Clements, 2012, pp. 145146). We
have also given reasons why the British form of the cyphering tradition lingered
about 30 years longer in Great Britain than in the United States of America
(Clements & Ellerton, 2015).
We are not surprised that writers on the history of mathematics education who
have never, or have only rarely, referred to the cyphering tradition will find it
difficult to embrace something of which they know little. It is understandable that
such writers should feel professionally threatened by our contention that the
cyphering tradition played a central role in the history of school mathematics.
We would contest Karps (2015) claim that we do not discuss general
methodological issues (p. 134)although we must confess that we have struggled
to understand what Karp meant by the term methodological issues. After all, we
do present a lag-time theoretical base for our studies, and we do discuss and use the
concept of curriculum as intended, implemented, and received. In all our
books we have not only made a point of stating our research questions clearly, but
we have also carefully provided answers to each question.
Karp did give a hint of what he meant by methodological issues when he
pointed out that a historian will think about, for example, how arithmetic was
taught in New England in the seventeenth century, why it was taught in some
particular way, and how this particular way of teaching it was connected with
general social history (p. 134). In fact, though, we specifically discuss the physical
and social contexts in which a seventeenth-century cyphering book was prepared in
New England (see Ellerton & Clements, 2014, pages 2021 and page 328).
In all three of our books to which Karp referred, we drew attention to pertinent
economic and social contexts influencing the teaching and learning of mathematics.
In the chapter on Abraham Lincolns cyphering book (Ellerton & Clements, 2014),
for example, there is a 13-page summary of the society, in and around Pigeon Creek
in Indiana during the period 18151830, in which the future President grew up. In
Chapter 4 of Abraham Lincolns Cyphering Book and Ten Other Extraordinary
Cyphering Books there is considerable discussion of the Revolutionary times in
North Carolina where two patriotic sisters, Elisabeth and Martha Ryan, prepared
their magnificent cyphering books between 1776 and 1781. And, in Chapter 5 of
the same book there is much discussion of the Irish-background context
surrounding Mary Walters in Baltimore around 1820. In Rewriting the History of
School Mathematics in North America 16071861, we went to much trouble to
describe and analyse how cyphering books prepared in Salem, Massachusetts,
related to economic and social factors in and around historic Salem.
Three of the five research questions in Thomas Jefferson and his Decimals call
for analyses of how policies and practices influenced school arithmetic curricula
(Clements & Ellerton, 2015, p. 15). Furthermore, our lag-time theoretical lens
emphasized the importance of ethnomathematical contexts, including family,
community, and work (Ellerton & Clements, 2014, p. 323). The details we offer in
Thomas Jefferson and his Decimals regarding the social, military, and political
contexts in which a young Revolutionary soldier, Cornelius Houghtaling, prepared
his cyphering book in and around the Huguenot settlement of New Paltz in the late
1770s suggests that Karp should have had little to complain about regarding our
efforts to provide context. Did Karp really expect us to provide detailed back-
grounds on the lives and social contexts of each young person who prepared any of
the numerous cyphering books to which we refer in the books that he reviewed?
In this present work, on the history of the Royal Mathematical School at
Christs Hospital, we have been concerned to place RMSs creation and
development within local, national and international contexts. The work of RMS
was linked to the military, and especially the navigational, needs of the nation, and
within Christs Hospital it was linked, indelibly, to the work of the Writing and
Grammar Schools, as well as to the whole Christs Hospital community. In writing
this book we became aware of, and have attempted to document, undercurrents and
tensions which needed to be considered and accounted for. At the same time,
RMSs contributions to the development of educational thinkinglocally,
nationally, and internationallyneeded to be identified, discussed, and evaluated.
We hope that readers of this book will agree that we have done much more than
merely describe the navigation cyphering books prepared by RMS students.
When we decided to include the word rewriting in the title of the first (Ellerton &
Clements, 2012) of the three books that Ackerberg-Hastings and Karp reviewed, we
realized that the meaning of that word would be scrutinized by readers. Karp has
maintained that supplementing or enriching might have been preferable to
rewriting. From our perspective, our analysis of early North American school
mathematics was enhanced by our emphasis on the central role of the cyphering
tradition. We also believed that because previous historians had not recognized the
extent to which the implemented curricula for school mathematics in schools within
the United States of America, up to about 1830, was influenced by the cyphering
tradition, it was in order for us to use the strong word, rewriting. Karp (2015)
took exception to our claim that, with respect to the teaching and learning of
elementary forms of mathematics in British and North American schools up to
about 1850, the most powerful evidence is likely to come from cyphering books. He
admitted, however, that many teachers did not have access to textbooks and that,
typically, one-room schoolhouse environments did not lend themselves easily to
whole-class teaching.
Karps (2015) implication that we have not taken due account of sources other than
cyphering books is inconsistent with the fact that we have examined a very large
number of mathematics textbooks used in North American schools during the
period 17011861. Furthermore, we have devoted much textual space, in each of
our books, to discussing content and emphases in commercially-distributed

textbooks (see, for example, Clements and Ellerton, 2015, pp. 103133).
As Karp (2015) pointed out, we mistakenly used the expression early in the
seventeenth century when referring to the year 1704 (p. 132). That said, we were
dismayed by the number of copying and other errors that Karp (2015) made in his
six-page review of our work. On page 133, for example, there were many copying
errors in a passage of nine lines that he quoted from Ellerton and Clements (2014).
Later, on the same page, he attributed a key quotation to Simmons (1936), when
Simons (1936) was what was needed. Furthermore, he did not include the Simons
reference in his reference listand he did not include the Ellerton and Clements
(2012) book in his reference list either, even though he referred to it in the first
paragraph of his review.
The quotation from Lao Genevra Simons (1936) to which Karp referred is worthy
of being reproduced here:
A great deal has already been said about the custom of keeping student
notebooks during this period of difficulty in obtaining books from England
and of printing books in the colonies. If all the notebooks now hoarded by
descendants of graduates of the early American colleges or lying neglected
and forgotten in attics and closets, if all these notebooks could be presented
to the several college libraries or historical societies, the history of early
American education would be greatly enriched. In these notebooks, there is
found the content and scope of the curriculum of the day in evidence that is
unmistakable. (Simons, 1936, p. 588)
In describing school mathematics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Karp
(2015) commented that education was far more individualized than it later
became (p. 133). After adding that independent note-taking (or memorization)
played an extremely important role, he stated: It probably does not hurt to repeat
all this in lectures to todays students, but no one working on the history of
education is likely to dispute it (p. 133). We interpret these comments as implying
that most modern teachers and writers on the history of school mathematics are well
acquainted with the prevalence of cyphering and recitation in the early schools. If
we go by what has appeared in books and journals then that is not true. For
example, most of the authors of chapters in the Handbook on the History of
Mathematics Education (Karp & Schubring, 2014) did not refer to cyphering (or
ciphering) booksand, in fact, almost all of the relatively few writers who did,
cited the work of Ellerton and Clements.
All other reviewers of the three books by Ellerton and Clements which Karp
considered (e.g., Ashbacher, 2015; Fried, 2015; Stein, 2013; Tattersall, 2014) have
been very positive in their overall evaluations. The Basic Library List Committee of
the Mathematical Association of America has recommended Abraham Lincolns
Cyphering Book and Ten Other Extraordinary Cyphering Books for acquisition by
undergraduate mathematics libraries. Three outstanding U.S. scholars (Jeremy
Kilpatrick, Fred Rickey, and Douglas Wilson) have written forewords for the three
Springer books already published, and Benjamin Wardhaugh, of Oxford University,
has written the foreword for this book.
As an addendum to this review we wish to say that there is a sense in which the history
of school mathematics has long been colonized by scholars, often in powerful positions, who
have adopted top-down, Eurocentric approaches. These scholars have rarely written papers
that suggest that they have been concerned about what was happening in schools attended by
young childrenand that comment especially applies to schools in nations like India, China,
Japan, Thailand, Kenya, Australia, Mexico, and Iran (to name just a few). They have tended
to concentrate on the contributions to the development of mathematical thinkingespecially
to what they have vaguely called mathematics educationby great mathematicians,
especially those from Continental European nations, and their main primary sources have
been mostly textbooks, official syllabuses, transcripts of public speeches, and extant letters or
other documents emanating from, or involving, famous mathematicians. Relatively few
scholarly publications have offered details of what was actually happening in interactions
between teachers and students in schools, or the actual forms of mathematics that younger
children were attempting to learn.
Scholars like Marjolein Kool (1999), Benjamin Wardhaugh (2012), John Denniss
(2012), and Jacqueline Stedall (2012) have shown us what we can learn by studying
handwritten texts prepared by school children. Of course, it is still important to investigate
developments in the history of school mathematics by analyzing textbooks, and researchers
like Danny Beckers (1999) have led the way in examining textbooks from vantage points
which include social and pedagogical considerations, as well as the ways in which the
mathematics was presented. Usually, research was driven mainly by textbook analyses (see,
e.g., Swetz, 1992), or by attempts to provide modern students with glimpses of approaches
adopted by European mathematicians during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries (see, e.g., Hallez, 1992). Although there was nothing inherently wrong with such
work, little emphasis was given to the implemented and received curricula of school-age
students who were studying mathematics during the period 16001850.
There can be no excuse, now, for not drawing sufficient attention to evidence found in
handwritten mathematics manuscripts prepared by children during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries because, somewhat surprisingly, these texts have now become much
more readily available than was the case at any time in the twentieth century. In the United
Kingdom, the Mathematical Associations excellent collection of cyphering books is held in
the David Wilson Library at the University of Leicester. In the United States of America,
more and more libraries have become willing to house and support extensive collections of
cyphering books (for example, the Phillips Library within the Peabody Essex Museum, at
Salem, Massachusetts, and the Kislak Center for Special Collections at the University of
Pennsylvania), and some libraries are preparing finding aids which relate especially to their
collections of cyphering books. The Ellerton-Clements collection of cyphering books includes
manuscripts prepared during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by students
in many different nations.
There are signs that, at last, a more comprehensive, global, and mature approach to
researching the history of school mathematicsan approach which appreciates and
incorporates bottom-up as well as top-down investigationsis emerging. It is hardly
surprising, however, that the need to take that approach seriously has not been welcomed by
researchers who have known very little about the cyphering tradition and have therefore
underestimated the importance of that tradition with respect to the history of school
mathematics.
References
Ackerberg-Hastings, A. (2013). Review. International Journal for the History of Mathematics
Education, 8(1), 8991.
Ashbacher, C. (2015). MAA review of Thomas Jefferson and his decimals 17751810:
Neglected years in the history of U.S. school mathematics. http://www.maa.org/press/
maa-reviews/thomas-jefferson-and-his-decimals.
Batterton, J. (1718). Handwritten manuscript prepared at Christs Hospital (held in the
Bodleian Libraries, Ms. Rawlinson A 308, The University of Oxford).
Beckers, D. J. (1999). Come children! Some changes in Dutch arithmetic books 1750
1850. Report 9902 of the Department of Mathematics, the University of Nijmegen.
Cox, J. (1723). Handwritten manuscript prepared at Christs Hospital (held in the Caird
Library at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, UK).
Ellerton, N. F., & Clements, M. A. (1988). Reshaping school mathematics in Australia 1788
1988. Australian Journal of Education, 32(3), 387405.
Ellerton, N. F., & Clements, M.A. (2012). Rewriting the history of school mathematics in
North America 16071861: The central role of cyphering books. New York, NY:
Springer.
Fried, M. (2015). Book review of Abraham Lincolns cyphering book and ten other
extraordinary cyphering books. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 17, 327332.
Hallez, M. (1992). Teaching Huygens in the rue Huygens: Introducing the history of 17th-
century mathematics in a junior secondary school. Science & Education, 1(3), 313328.
10(2), 131136.
Karp, A., & Schubring, G. (Eds.). (2014) Handbook on the history of mathematics education.
Kool, M. (1999). Die conste vanden getale. Een studie van Nederlandstalige rekenboeken uit
de vijftiende en zestiende eeuw, met een glossarium van rekenkundige termen (The art
of numbers. A study of Dutch arithmetic books of the 15th and 16th century, with a
glossary of arithmetical term). PhD thesis. Hilversum, The Netherlands: University
College.
Leder, G., & Forgasz, H. (Eds.). (2007). Stepping stones for the 21st century. Rotterdam, The
Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
References for Appendix E 289
Stein, R. G. (2013). Review of Rewriting the History of School Mathematics in North

America 16071861. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 82, 165167.
Swetz, F. (1992). Fifteenth and sixteenth century arithmetic texts: What can we learn from
them? Science & Education, 1(4), 365378.
Tattersall, J. J. (2014, August 12). Review of Abraham Lincolns cyphering book and ten
other extraordinary cyphering books. http://www.maa.org/press/maa-reviews/abraham-
lincolns-cyphering-book-and-ten-other-extraordinary-cyphering-books.
Appendix F
James Hodgsons (1706) Preface to his Textbook on Navigation
Introduction
James Hodgsons 506-page book on the theory of navigation was published in London
in 1706, less than three years before he became Master of the Royal Mathematical School at
Christs Hospital. The book offered a comprehensive overview of navigational theory, and
especially of how mathematics could be applied to solve practical navigational problems.
Hodgsons (1706) Preface provided a remarkable set of statements which testified fully to the
authors determination to change the direction of both mathematics education and navigation
education in England.
A copy of Hodgsons (1706) textbook only became available to us (Ellerton and
Clements) after we had submitted the first draft of this present book to the publishers. We
immediately recognized that what Hodgson wrote in his textbook would have illuminated
sections of each of Chapters 3, 5 and 6 of this book. We decided that the best we could do
was to provide an unedited transcript of Hodgsons (1706) Preface as an appendix.
In his Preface, Hodgson provided one of the strongest early statements on how, in the
past, genuine mathematics and navigation education had been sacrificed to a form of rote
learning which had not generated, among learners, an understanding of how mathematics
could complement and explain many of the main principles of navigation. This, Hodgson
claimed, had seriously affected the efficiency of the Royal Navy. He hoped that the new
book would help to change that state of affairs.
James Hodgsons Preface (in Unedited Form)
Nothing is more natural, and in its self more reasonable, than for men when they hear
of a New Book upon a Subject that has been already handled by many, to inquire what the
Author has advanced upon it, or wherein it differs from others: And no other answer seems
requisite, but that as others consist of a company of Rules put together, without so much as
an Attempt of shewing the Reason of any one individual thing, this contains the whole in a
natural order, and every thing is fairly deduced from the first and most simple Principles of
the Mathematicks.
How beneficial a Treatise of this Nature, wherein every thing is naturally inferrd from
the Depths of Geometry, may be to young beginners, and how much the want of it, may have
contributed to that great Ignorance which now reigns amongst the generality of the English
Sailors, is well known to the Skilful World; insomuch, that I thought that I could not at this
time, do a thing more acceptable to my Country-Men, than to employ some part of my time
in Composing such a piece, as if thoroughly understood, will undoubtedly give them the
clearest Light, and lead them into a perfect Knowledge of one of the most advantageous Parts
of the Mathematicks.
London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
292 Appendix F: James Hodgsons (1706) Preface
When I reflected upon the Usefulness of Navigation, when I considered it as that which
gave Men the first occasion to Consult the motions of the heavenly bodies, and has since
been the principal cause of their farther enquiries, when I considered it as the chief Support
of the Wealth and grandeur of this Nation, I could not but be surprisd to find in the Books
now most in Vogue, this Subject treated in so rude and undigested a manner, as if its Laws
had been deliverd down to the Authors by Tradition, and it had been an unpardonable
Presumption in them, to make any Enquiry into their Original.
To prevent the ill Consequences that attend such Methods for the future, and to let the
Industrious Sailor see that that there is as much reason for every process, as there is for the
first Establish'd Truths, the following treatise has been Writ, which I was the more inclined
to do, when I considered that Her Majesty, out of her great Generosity, and Earnest Desire to
see Arts and Science Flourish in this Potent Island, has so largely Contributed towards the
Education of such young gentlemen, who shall voluntarily offer themselves for the defence
of their country, for whom this tract was principally intended. And I am satisfied that if their
instructors would but make use of such method as this, the Royal Navy of England would
soon shew the happy effects of it.
The methods of teaching by rules only, has been so universally practicd, and has got
such a head, that the poison has infected almost the whole race of English sailors: but sure I
am, that if once they do but apply themselves to search into the reasons of what they have
thus learnd, the satisfaction will be so great, that they will for ever after be uneasie with
themselves, that they did not begin it sooner.
There is not so vast a disproportion in the apprehensions of men, but that what is
attaind by one of a quicker capacity, may by a more sedulous application be comprehended
by another, and since the grounds of Mathematical knowledge are as simple and plain as can
be, but our sailors (who are easily taught to read, write, and perform the ordinary operations
of Arithmetick) if well instructed in the reasons, instead of their rules and canons, would take
much more delight in them, retain them better, and make much greater advances in
Geography, Navigation and Astronomy, than now they do.
To encourage them in the prosecution of this method, I have begun with 19 select
propositions, extracted out of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th books of Euclids Elements, after
the method I learnd at Her Majestys Observatory, by the help of which, I have shewn at
large, the construction of the tables of natural sines, tangents and secants, and their use in the
resolution of the several cases of right and oblique angled plain triangles, not so much by
axioms, as from principles before established.
And here I must take leave to tell those gentlemen, who may blame me for insisting so
long upon the calculation of tables already made, with great care and accuracy, that besides
the advantage of correcting (with judgment) such errors as may have crept into the printed
editions, and the uses that attend this knowledge, its impossible for any to understand either
plain or spherical trigonometry as they ought to do, without a perfect knowledge of their
nature and construction, which none can well do, till they have been at the pains to compute
some few of them, as I am very well assured from a train of experience.
In the Second Part, I have proceeded to shew the application of plain Trigonometry, to
Navigation, beginning with some useful definitions, and explications by way of introduction,
that so the student may proceed with all the security and advantage possible.
James Hodgsons (1706) Preface 293
I have given the solution of the six cases of plain sailing, with some instances of their
use, together with one universal traverse, including all the useful varieties that may happen in
any case.
After this, follows a table, shewing the difference of latitude and departure, to every
degree, point and quarter point of the compass, very useful for the ready working of
traverses, when time or occasion will not permit to make use of the tables of logarithms,
sines and tangents.
In the Oblique Sailing, I have chosen such problems only, as may be use to the
ingenious seaman, and in the business of currents, have shewn him the reasons of the several
processes from the establishd laws of motion.
In the next place, is shewn in the construction and use of the plain chart, how to resolve
all the problems concerning it, viz, the pricking down of a place from any possible data, and
the contrary, which is inserted here, not so much for its great use (since it is grounded upon a
false principle) as to satisfie some people, who never think a work of this nature perfect
without it.
After this follows the solution of the cases of sailing under a parallel, whence is
deduced a table for determining the miles answering to a degree of latitude under any given
parallel of latitude, and the solution of all the problems of Mercators sailing by the middle
latitude, two several ways, whereby the curious may be satisfied how far he may depend
upon it. And to assist him the more in this, I have given the solution of a traverse, in which
the difference of longitude has been investigated from every particular course and distance,
as well as from the whole difference of latitude and departure: from whence such
consequences are drawn, as may be of great use to fortify the students judgment.
But to give him all the helps necessary, I have shewn at large, the defects of the plain
chart, and enquird into the nature and properties of the true chart, commonly called
Mercators, in which I have been very plain and particular, in demonstrating the verity of it, in
shewing the several advances that have been made in order to its perfection: And in drawing
from the principles, several methods for the construction of the tables of meridional parts,
which ought to be thoroughly and perfectly understood.
From hence, I have gone on to shew the use of the meridional parts, in the solution of
all the problems of sailing, and to gratifie the industrious, have given the solutions of the
same problems, from the principles before establishd, by the help of the artificial or
logarithmick tangents only.
And that nothing might be wanting, I have shewn at large, the construction of the
Mercators projection (of great use for laying down of countrys and sea-coasts, and for the
tracing out of voyages) as also the methods for the pricking down of places from any
possible data, and to find the bearing, difference of latitude, longitude, &c of any two or
more places in the chart.
In the Third Part are the laws of stereographic projection, laid down and demonstrated,
in a much more easie and simple manner than usual, with their application to the geometrical
construction of the cases of right and oblique angled spherical triangles, which having more
of curiosity in them than of use, are placed in a section by themselves, to separate them from
that more useful part, viz. the solutions of the same cases by calculation. In the investigation
of which I have been very particular, and traced every thing from its first principles, and
chose rather to deduce the proportions, after the manner used by Gellibrand, Caswel, &c, than
by the Lord Napiers theorem, which was contrivd on purpose, to instruct such unthinking
294 Appendix F: James Hodgsons (1706) Preface
people, as were not capable of, or at least would not give themselves the trouble of learning
the other and more preferable methods.
This in the 4th and last Part, is applied to the actual solution of such problems as arise
from the diurnal motion of the Sun, or rotation of the Earth about her axis, which are all
ranged in proper order, and ought to be perfectly understood.
To which are added new tables of the Suns place, declination, right ascension,
calculated from the newest solar tables, for the years 1705, 1706, 1707, 1708, with tables of
their variations, to make then serve for 20 years to come, and a small catalogue of 30 eminent
fixed stars, all deduced from observations made at Her Majesties Observatory at Greenwich,
where I had the happiness to have my education.
The rules for finding the hour of the day and night, amplitudes and azimuths of the Sun
or stars, and thence the variation of the needle, also the methods of determining the latitude
of places or heights of the pole, by the meridional altitude or zenith distances of the Sun or
stars, have been fully deliverd, and in such a manner as I believe will be easily understood.
Lastly, is added a table of the latitudes and longitudes of about 150 places of note,
deduced from, and confirmd by celestial observations, which may be of great use to the
skilful mariner, and shall be augmented, as often as opportunity shall offer.
And now nothing more need to be said, than that tho this book was begun when I had
some leisure upon my hands, yet it has been carried on, and compleated in the midst of a
continued hurry of business and interruptions: So that I dont in the least question, but the
candid reader, will make such allowances for the faults of the press as have unavoidably
escapd me through my daily avocations, and which will be gratefully receivd from any,
who will but give themselves the trouble to inform me.
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Author Index
A Boorstin, Daniel J., 139

Abrahamson, Gerald L., 228 Boxer, Charles Ralph, 14, 27
A Carthusian, 186 Brooks, Baylus C., 77
Ackerberg-Hastings, Amy, 281283 Bryant, Arthur, 16, 61, 62, 213, 214, 216
Adams, Andrew, 18, 28, 79 Buchbinder, Orly, 208
Adams, Walter, 34
Alexander, John, 46, 126, 200, 207 C
Alexandri, Johannis, 46, 125, 126, 201, Carpenter, Dorothy I., 98
207 Chalmers, Alexander, 30
Allan, George A. T., 2, 4, 18, 55, 161, Chapman, Allan, 34
184, 212, 226 Chazan, Daniel, 208
Allen, John B. L., 14, 17, 29, 31, 68, 142 Childs, John, 15
Andrade, Edward N., De C., 34 Christs Hospital, 6, 15, 16, 29, 61, 63, 65,
Andrew, Henry Joseph Calkin, 111, 68, 7077, 81, 82, 9094, 96, 98, 100,
183185, 220 101, 103, 104, 114116, 123126, 129,
Arbuthnot, John, 28, 44, 85 136, 139140, 146, 147, 165, 166, 194,
Armytage, Walter H. G., 85 212, 216218, 226
A Record of Our Past, 188 City of London, 6, 7, 62, 65, 79, 98, 99,
Ashbacher, Charles, 285 189, 219
A Society of Gentlemen, 142, 146, 148, Clapham, John Harold, 13
158, 214 Clark, Peter, 2
Clements, McKenzie A. (Ken), xxi, 6, 7,
B 10, 3032, 39, 51, 66, 68, 79, 89, 90,
Bache, Alexander Dallas, 18 92, 96100, 111, 138, 146148, 153,
Baily, Francis, 41, 47 154, 159, 165, 183, 185187, 195, 196,
Barford, Mike, 17 206, 210, 219223, 228, 281284
Bartlett, David W., 188 Committee of Old Blues, 2, 3, 16, 20, 50,
Batterton, James, 106, 108111, 186, 55, 140142, 145, 151153, 157, 161,
219, 281 212, 213
Beckers, Danny J., 287 Confalonieri, Sara, 7, 221
Beier, Augustus Leon, 2 Cook, Alan, 41, 42
Bell, Walter George, 13, 27 Coote, Stephen, 15
Bellhouse, David R., 98, 122, 138, 223 Cope, Thomas D., 146
Bellman, Richard, 195 Cox, John, 105107, 110, 111, 219, 281
Bennett, James A., 41, 47 Cracraft, James, 18, 55
Bidwell, James K., 9698 Craik, Alexander D. D., 166
Bishop, Alan, J., xxi Cross, Anthony, 18, 55, 77
Bjarnadttir, Kristin, 7, 96, 98 Curtis, Stephen J., 168
Blanch, William Harnett, 83, 104, 138,
142, 146, 148, 156, 188, 212, 218, D
222, 281 DAmbrosio, Ubiratan, 221
Blues and the Royal Navy, 161, 224 Danskin, John M., 195

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
312 Author Index
Danson, Edwin, 52, 218 Forster, George, 145, 150

Dauben, Jospeh W., 221 Freeman, Frank N., 6, 165
Davids, Karel, 13, 158 Fried, Michael A., 43, 285
Davies, J. David, 15, 16, 18, 44, 137, Frith, James F., 4
201, 206
Davis, Ralph, 18, 98, 213 G
De La Bedoyere, Guy, 73, 80 Gardy, Kaitlyn E., 129, 147, 150, 151
Denniss, John, 89, 98, 111, 154, 220, Gascoigne, Robert, 13
223, 287 Gellibrand, Henry, 100102
Devreese, Jozef T., 17 Gray, George J., 142, 146, 151
De Vries, Jan, 13 Great Britain, 8, 66, 117, 132, 168189,
Dickens, Charles, 99 219
Dickinson, Harry W., 42, 137 Griffin, John P., 3
Dieudonn, Jean, 208 Guicciardini, Niccol, 44, 139
Dijksterhuis, Eduard Jan, 62
Ditton, Humfrey, 44, 45, 47, 126128, H
200201, 206, 207 Hale, William H., 157, 165, 168, 186, 212
Dixson, Thomas, 96 Haley, Kenneth Harold Dobson, 13, 16,
Dobson, James, 110, 111 27, 28
Dodson, James, 146 Hallez, Maryvonne, 287
Downes, Kerry, 33 Hans, Nicholas A., 9, 18, 19, 42, 49,
Dring, Edmund, 15 5152, 55, 62, 8286, 148, 220, 223
Dymond, Joseph, 53, 145 Harris, Daniel, 147
Hertel, Joshua T., 90
E Hinchliff, Peter B., 168, 170
Education Commission, 167 Historical and Descriptive Notice of
Ellerton, Nerida F., xxi, 6, 7, 10, 3032, Christs Hospital, 2, 33, 167, 189
39, 51, 66, 68, 79, 89, 90, 92, 96100, Hodgson, James, 9, 41, 48, 49, 96, 105,
111, 138, 146148, 154, 159, 165, 186, 106, 110, 122, 124, 130136, 138, 139,
187, 195, 196, 206, 219223, 281284 201205, 207, 208, 221223, 291
Ensor, Edmund Hemery, 110, 111 Hopkins, Frederick G., 35
Entick, John E., 17 Howson, A. Geoffrey, 10, 16, 18, 28, 29,
Espinasse, Margaret, 3436 49, 55, 8485, 98, 142, 196, 212, 222,
223
F Hyrup, Jens, 98
Falconer, William, 51 Hudon, Daniel, 145
Feingold, Mordechai, 44 Hughes, Lindsey, 77
Finlay, Roger, 2 Hunt, James H. Leigh, 149
Flamsteed, John, 29, 31, 38, 41, 42, 44,
48, 68, 70, 92, 102103, 138139, 142 I
Flecker, Henry Lael Oswald, 29, 68, 70, Ifrah, Georges, 98
123, 214, 216 Iliffe, Robert, 30, 31, 36, 4245, 48, 49,
Fleming, Elizabeth, 208 63, 65, 66, 7073, 78, 121, 122
Forbes, Eric Gray, 40 Israel, Jonathan I., 13, 14
Forgasz, H., 281 Ivashova, Olga, 7, 18, 77, 138, 146
Author Index 313
J Manzione, Carol K., xxii, 14, 6, 15, 62,

Jackson, Lambert L., 96, 98 81, 82, 99
Jacob, Margaret C., 16 McGee, David, 98
Jardine, Lisa, 32, 34, 36 McMillan, Mark M., 149
J. I. W. [John Iliffe Wilson], 2, 151 Money, John, 138
Johnson, R. Brimley, 149, 150 Moon, Bob, 208
Jones, Clifford, 2, 15, 16, 20, 27, 28, 35, Moore, Jonas, 15, 3032, 37, 38, 41, 42,
38, 41, 63, 66, 68, 70, 72, 73, 77, 78, 44, 63, 6668, 71, 79, 80, 92, 101104,
91, 95, 99, 100, 102106, 110, 116, 124, 217
150, 153, 157, 158, 160, 184, 186, Morpurgo, Jack Eric, 18, 55, 161, 184, 212
211214, 219, 220, 227, 281
Jones, Harold Spencer, 18 N
Jones, William, 122 Newton, Isaac, 26, 31, 36, 37, 43, 44, 96,
196, 205, 216, 247257
K
Karp, Alexander, 7, 10, 55, 83, 84, 90, O
212, 220, 222, 281285 Okenfuss, Max J., 18
Keitel, Christine, xxi, 222 Ollard, Richard, 16, 19, 27
Keraliya, Rajesh A., 195 Orchiston, Wayne, 145
Kevorkian, Martin, 228 Organisation for European Economic
Kilpatrick, Jeremy, xxi, 222 Cooperation and Development, 195,
Kirk, Rudolph, 15, 20, 28, 29, 42, 61, 208
6366, 68, 70, 73, 78, 212, 214 Ormond, David, 13
Kitcher, Philip, 201 Our Shipmasters, 184
Kline, Morris, 208
Kool, Marjolein, 7, 287 P
Krger, Jenneke, 7, 16, 62, 79 Page, Charles, 111, 112, 186, 219, 220
Page, Frances, M., 99
L Parshall, Karen Hunger, 221
Lamb, Charles, 149152 Patel, Madhabhai M., 195
Laycock, John A., 29, 30 Pearce, Ernest H., 2, 9, 1416, 20, 26, 28,
Leach, Arthur F., 6 30, 33, 35, 37, 38, 49, 53, 55, 66, 71,
Leder, Gilah, 283 73, 78, 82, 100, 123, 129, 130, 141,
Leung, Frederick, xxi 142, 145, 147150, 152, 153, 155158,
Long, Pamela O., 98 161, 162, 168, 200, 212, 218, 221, 226,
Love, Eric, 208 227
Lucas, Edward V., 53 Pepys, Samuel, 16, 18, 19, 2729, 61, 62,
Lyte, Henry C. M., 167 78, 115, 237246
Perkins, Peter, 31, 68
M Personal Items, 184
Maclure, J. Stuart, 8, 168 Pimm, David, 208
Mahan, Alfred T., 18, 85 Plumley, Nick M., 15, 16, 20, 21, 29, 34,
Maitland, F. William, 17 63, 65, 66, 78, 142
Mansell, Ken, 147, 148, 150, 151, Popkewitz, Thomas, 208
160, 224 Potts, Robert, 4, 5, 19, 166, 188
314 Author Index
R Taylor, Eva G. R., 34, 48, 65, 7173, 78,

ReviewTrollopes History of Christs 130, 134, 146, 212, 217, 218
Hospital (1834), 162 Thornbury, Walter, 157, 227
Roach, John, 166, 223 Timbs, John, 213
Roberts, Herbert A., 71 Tinniswood, Adrian, 32
Robertson, John, 5052, 96, 101, 103, To Mathemats, 188
105, 108, 110, 111, 137, 138, 146, 223 Trollope, William, 24, 9, 15, 28, 30, 49,
Robertson, Richard Murdoch, 111, 186, 53, 55, 70, 78, 82, 100, 123, 129130,
187, 220 141, 142, 145, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155,
Robinson, Henry W., 34, 35 156, 160162, 166, 168, 189, 212, 218,
Roderick, Gordon W., 223 221, 225, 226
Rothman, Patricia, 122 Turnbull, Herbert W., 31, 37, 38, 72, 73,
85, 93, 196200, 247257
S Turner, H. Dan T., 16, 41, 83, 138, 213
Schofield, Roger S., 2
Schubring, Gert, 7, 10, 55, 83, 212, 220, U
222 Unger, Friedrich, 98
Scott, John F., 38 University of Cambridge Faculty of
Seaman, William H., 186, 188, 226 Mathematics, 167
Secretan, Catherine, 16
Shelley, George, 6 V
Shrosbree, Colin, 168 Van Berkel, Klaas, 16
Simon, Joan, 82 Vanden Berghe, Guido, 17
Simons, Lao Genevra, 90, 280, Van Egmond, Warren, 96, 98
285286 van der Woude, Ad, 13
Slack, Paul, 2, 3 Vogeli, Bruce R., 83
Sloan, Kim M., 16
Smith, Bernard, 98, 111 W
Sobel, Dava, 39 Wakefield, Julie, 43
Spiesser, Maryvonne, 98 Wales, William, 52, 53, 145, 146, 153,
Stahl, Alan M., 98 154, 161, 223
Stamper, Alva Walker, 7 Walkingame, Francis, 99, 111
Stedall, Jacqueline, 154, 166, 223, 287 Wallis, Henry M., 44
Stein, Robert, 283 Wallis, Peter J., 111, 220, 222
Stephens, Michael D., 223 Wardhaugh, Benjamin (Foreword), 98,
Stephenson, Nicholas, 31, 32, 67, 79 111, 154, 220, 223, 287
Stevin, Simon, 16 Waters, David W., 16, 18, 79
Stewart, Ian G., 41 Weld, Charles R., 32
Stewart, Larry, 20, 44, 4749, 85, 122, Westall, Richard S., 36
148, 159, 220 Westbury, Ian, 89, 196
Swetz, Frank, 97, 98, 287 White, John, 65
Wickes, Michael, 96
T Wigelsworth, Jeffrey R., 20, 42, 49, 72,
Talfourd, Thomas Noon, 151 221
Tanner, Joseph R., 28, 137 Wilkins, John, 32
Tattersall, James, J., 283 Williams, Glyndwr, 53, 145
Author Index 315
Willis, Richard, 166, 223 Wrigley, E.A. (Tony), 2

Willmoth, Frances, 25, 2932, 40, 42, 44, Wurtzburg, Charles E., 51
48, 49, 63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 78, 82,
122 Y
Willson, Francis M. G., 168 Yeldham, Florence A., 98
Wilson, David K., 212
Wilson, Douglas L., 10 Z
Wilson, John Iliffe, 16, 55, 121 Zakaria, Fareed, 216
Woodman, Richard, 18, 28, 77
Subject Index
A Charles II, King, 15, 16, 20, 2732, 34, 40,

Abbaci and the abbaco tradition, 29, 79, 84, 69, 83, 121, 130, 136, 155157, 168,
9799, 158 213, 228, 237246, 250
Algebra, 7, 29, 3132, 37, 4647, 62, 72, Christs Hospital, London, 110, 1320,
74, 84, 91, 93, 125, 126, 131, 132, 166, 6370, 7885, 145162, 165189,
171, 173, 175, 176, 178, 181, 193, 200, 226227, 237
201, 206, 208, 211215, 221, 252, 255, see also Royal Mathematical School
260, 264, 266, 267, 272, 274278 ages of students, 18, 20, 62, 84, 124,
Anglo-Dutch Wars, 1314, 16 156, 158, 160, 193, 194, 197, 201,
Apprentices, 6, 9, 16, 18, 19, 26, 29, 36, 205, 206, 210, 213, 216, 217, 223,
5052, 54, 61, 62, 64, 66, 68, 72, 227, 240241
7476, 79, 80, 82, 83, 90, 91, 96, 99, beginnings, 174, 121
111, 113117, 121, 122, 125, 133, 140, Christ Church, 17, 18, 33, 35
145146, 149, 151, 153, 154, 159161, Commercial School, 174, 177, 181, 182
167, 184, 186, 194, 213215, 217, 218, Committee of Almoners, 20, 34, 4447,
224, 225, 228, 238, 241, 243, 251, 252 50, 52, 54, 65, 7278, 80, 100, 113,
Arithmetic, 1, 4, 68, 17, 19, 20, 29, 36, 49, 116, 122126, 129, 136, 139, 140,
51, 52, 54, 6367, 75, 79, 84, 91, 142, 146149, 152, 154156, 160,
93100, 116, 122, 126, 147, 153, 158, 165167, 215, 226
159, 165, 167, 173175, 177, 178, 181, curriculum of, 110, 18, 62, 74, 75,
182, 187, 189, 193, 194, 198201, 89117, 123, 130, 131, 135142,
211213, 216, 219, 221225, 227, 228, 146148, 154, 156, 158159, 161,
240242, 247, 248, 250, 253, 255, 165, 167, 170, 183, 184, 186189,
261266, 274, 276279 193206, 208, 211217, 219, 221,
Astronomy, 7, 9, 19, 26, 2933, 3942, 47, 222, 225, 226, 228, 239
48, 51, 52, 62, 67, 71, 73, 94, 95, 97, cyphering, 6, 7, 9, 31, 51, 61, 62, 65,
102, 106, 130, 135, 136, 138140, 148, 68, 72, 79, 82, 89, 90, 93, 96117,
154, 158, 161, 165, 173, 174, 196, 213, 137, 146148, 153, 154, 159, 165,
215, 248, 252, 253, 255, 274 174, 177, 183187, 196, 205, 211,
Austria, 85 215, 219222, 224, 227
elitist tendencies, 814, 188189, 200,
B 201, 207, 222
Bache Alexander Dallas, 18 entrance regulations, 1720
Batterton, James, 106, 108111, 186, 219 evaluation of students at, 1718
Books (see Textbooks) famous graduates of, 5052, 145, 149,
Boyer, James, 142, 145, 148150, 156, 151153, 157, 160161
160, 161, 166 governors of, 3, 26, 30, 3336, 38, 41,
Bullying, 129, 149, 153, 160, 161 50, 51, 63, 66, 68, 7476, 91, 94,
95, 104, 105, 115, 116, 123, 149,
C 157, 166, 167, 188, 199, 226
Calculus, 122, 139, 171, 176, 201, 202, Grammar School, 3, 4, 6, 8, 19, 55,
206208, 261, 272 6165, 67, 68, 70, 81, 100, 114,
123126, 129, 130, 136, 142, 145,

London 16731868, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-46657-6
318 Subject Index
147150, 155158, 160162, 115, 122125, 129, 136, 142, 147153,

165170, 175177, 180, 183, 155, 157, 158, 166, 167, 170, 172,
186188, 194, 196, 199, 200, 205, 174177, 183, 186189, 194, 199201,
211, 212, 214, 215, 222, 223, 226, 205, 215, 217, 223, 225, 227, 237,
227, 238, 242, 261, 264, 269, 271 239242, 251, 252
Infant School, 3, 6 Clayton, Robert, 15, 16, 157, 228
influence on education elsewhere, 10, Cocker Edward, 6
14, 18, 19, 37, 42, 49, 51, 52, 55, Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 149, 155,
8384, 146, 148, 212, 219, 220, 157
248, 249, 252 Compound operations, 165, 219
Kips view of, 1718 Cook, James, 52, 142, 145, 150152, 159,
methods of teaching, 6, 19, 20, 44, 50, 161
55, 61, 62, 64, 72, 79, 81, 90, 91, Cox, John, 105107, 110, 111, 219
98105, 117, 129, 140, 142, 148, Curriculum, 110, 13, 15, 17, 26, 30, 31,
153154, 160162, 174, 188, 194, 3439, 42, 44, 51, 52, 54, 55, 61, 62,
195, 206, 207, 215, 217, 219221, 64, 72, 7779, 8987, 90117, 121,
224, 239, 243, 266 122, 124, 126, 129138, 146, 147, 154,
navigation emphasis at, 7, 9, 1320, 28, 156, 158, 159, 161, 165, 167, 170, 183,
31, 35, 37, 3944, 46, 49, 5153, 184, 186189, 193197, 200201, 205,
55, 61, 62, 6468, 70, 72, 73, 206, 208, 214216, 218, 225
7779, 81, 83, 84, 89, 9195, 97, and lag time, 910, 193208
98, 100, 103111, 113117, 121, implemented, 7, 9, 10, 20, 38, 67, 79,
122, 124, 125, 129131, 135138, 89, 91, 129, 146, 154, 158, 159,
140, 145148, 152154, 157159, 183188, 193, 195, 196, 201205,
161, 165, 167, 172174, 183185, 210, 214, 215, 219220, 224
187, 188, 193, 194, 196, 197, intended, 9, 20, 31, 3538, 42, 7780,
199201, 205, 206, 211223, 225, 84, 8996, 121, 124, 130, 131, 146,
227, 241, 248, 249, 252256, 274, 158, 159, 170, 193, 196, 201,
275 205207, 210, 213217, 225,
Newgate Street, 1, 226 247257
Reading School, 147 received, 9, 18, 6667, 71, 79, 80, 89,
relocation to Horsham, 225228 113117, 159, 183188, 194, 196,
run-away students, 80, 129, 148, 225 214216, 222, 224
staff at the school, 34 secondary-school, 8, 65, 189, 193, 194,
Writing School, 3, 4, 6, 19, 45, 50, 52, 207, 208, 220221
61, 62, 61, 62, 6466, 75, 7981, Cyphering approach, 6, 8, 9, 19, 31, 51, 54,
98100, 125, 147, 156, 165, 189, 65, 66, 79, 89, 96113, 137, 145, 148,
213, 216, 217, 219, 223, 238, 241 159, 165, 219224, 281287
Chronology, 51 Cyphering books, 1, 6, 7, 31, 51, 72, 76, 89,
Ciphering (see Cyphering) 90, 93, 96111, 146148, 153, 154,
Clarendon Royal Commission 159, 165, 174, 177, 183186, 196, 205,
(18611864), 168 215, 218224, 228
Classical tradition in curriculum, 1, 34, 6, and Edward Paget, 72, 93, 103104,
8, 16, 19, 20, 2932, 34, 38, 39, 42, 44, 201, 215, 217218, 281287
51, 52, 54, 55, 62, 6469, 7274, 79, at Christs Hospital, 7, 31, 51, 61, 62,
81, 84, 90, 91, 96, 98, 101, 105, 114, 65, 72, 79, 82, 89, 93, 96113, 147,
Subject Index 319
154, 159, 165, 163, 174, 177, Examinations (written), 116, 166, 167,
184187, 196, 211, 215224, 227 170, 174, 180, 182, 183, 219, 223, 224
Benjamin Raffless (1755) book, 51
Charles Pages (1826) book, 110112, F
186, 220 Flamsteed, John, 8, 9, 25, 26, 2931, 36,
complemented by textbooks, 31, 37, 3944, 47, 48, 68, 7073, 80, 92, 102,
38, 51, 6668, 80, 89, 90, 92, 93, 103, 121, 122, 135136, 138139, 142,
96, 98, 100, 101, 103106, 110, 156, 215217, 226, 255, 256
111, 130137, 154, 171, 177, 178, and Edmond Halley, 25, 26, 31, 36, 37,
193, 201, 202, 205, 207, 214, 217, 4044, 68
219224 and Isaac Newton, 38, 39, 41
Henry Josiah Calkin Andrews (1836) and James Hodgson, 25, 3942, 4748,
book, 111, 184, 185 99, 102, 122, 135136, 138, 142,
James Battertons (1718) book, 106, 215
108111, 186, 219, 281 and Jonas Moore, 30, 3941
James Wests (1786) book, 153154 and Samuel Pepys, 4243, 73
John Coxs (1723) book, 105107, 110, Astronomer Royal, 3942, 136, 138, 139
111, 219, 281 portrait of, 40
Richard Murdoch Robertsons (1858) Fluxions, 44, 47, 49, 134, 139, 166, 193,
book, 111, 186, 187 201204
Fortification, 7, 31, 51, 62, 67, 92, 94, 97,
D 137, 197, 198, 249
Decimal fractions, 7, 910, 37, 38, 46, 54, Four operations in arithmetic, 1, 4, 7, 96,
9193, 95, 97, 116, 158, 181, 196, 206, 165
220, 247, 253, 255, 266, 279 France, 7, 13, 32, 37, 83, 85, 98, 130, 138,
Denniss, John, 89, 98, 111, 154, 220, 224 194, 212, 248, 249, 252, 254
Descartes, Ren, 201
Dieudonn, Jean, 208, 285 G
Dilworth, Thomas, 220, 222 Geometry (Euclid), 68, 19, 3032, 34, 35,
Dissenting academies, 223 37, 38, 43, 46, 51, 54, 62, 63, 67, 75,
Ditton, Humfrey, 9, 25, 26, 38, 4447, 52, 78, 83, 84, 91, 94, 95, 101, 102, 104,
74, 84, 121, 124128, 136, 193, 106, 122, 126, 130134, 140, 166, 171,
200201, 205207, 215, 216 175, 176, 178, 181, 197, 198, 201, 206,
supported by Isaac Newton, 121, 215 208, 213, 221, 222, 248, 252, 255, 260,
Dodson, James, 146, 158, 219 264, 266, 267, 272, 275278, 292
Dutch education traditions, 1518, 62, 79, George I, King, 130
194 George II, King, 111, 138
Dutch naval strength, 1314, 16, 27, 213 Germany, 7, 13, 14, 28, 83, 85, 98
Duytsche Mathematique (school for Grammar School (at Christs Hospital),
engineering education), 16, 62 14, 6, 8, 19, 53, 55, 6165, 67, 68, 70,
81, 100, 114, 123126, 129130, 136,
E 142, 145, 147151, 155158, 160162,
Edward VI (King), 2 165172, 175180, 186, 188, 194, 196,
Engineering schools, 16, 62, 197198, 249 199, 200, 205, 211, 212, 214, 215, 223,
Ethnomathematics, 195, 196 224, 226, 228, 238240, 242, 264, 269,
Euclid (see Geometry) 271
320 Subject Index
criticisms by Samuel Pepys, 6266, 68, ages of his RMS students, 129130
239 allegations that he was absent-minded,
E.R. Pearces and William Trollopes 50
connections with, 123, 129130, and his (1723) A Systme of the
141, 142, 145, 148153, 155158, Mathematics, 9, 106, 130136, 138,
161162, 167168, 189, 212, 218, 201208
219, 226227 and his teaching, 4849, 110, 117, 129,
Grecians (and Deputy Grecians), 4, 84, 148, 159, 195, 221, 222, 224, 226,
67, 81, 150, 166, 169172, 291294
175177, 179181, 183, 186189, and Humphry Ditton, 121, 124126,
260261, 263, 264, 267268, 136
271273, 275, 277 and John Flamsteed, 4142, 4748,
moves to allow students to study more 135136
mathematics, 124126, 129130, and John Robertson, 5051, 121, 131,
148, 165167, 183, 186, 188, 194, 137, 140
223 and Latin for RMS students, 5556,
Great Britain Navigation Acts, 13, 14 122124, 129, 136, 142, 228
Greek, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 19, 31, 62, 65, 72, 81, antagonizes Grammar School,
101, 122, 167, 183, 186189, 224, 225, 122123, 125, 129
269, 271, 273 appointment as RMS master, 38, 96,
Greenwich, 26, 30, 33, 3942, 47, 71, 84, 122, 218
89, 102, 105107, 110, 138, 145, 219 biased evaluations by Trollope and
Royal Observatory, 26, 30, 34, 39, 41, Pearce, 49, 5355, 78, 129130,
44, 47, 71, 102, 145, 161, 215, 220 141, 142, 156, 159160, 162, 221,
Gresham College, 31, 32, 34, 35, 71, 102 226
lecturer in Londons coffee houses,
H 48
Halley, Edmond, 8, 25, 26, 31, 36, 37, not recommended by Isaac Newton, 49,
4044, 49, 68, 70, 72, 73, 80, 92, 102, 218
103, 122, 138, 156, 158, 196, 216, 217, portrait of, 48, 227
226 textbooks that he authored, 9, 41,
portrait of, 43 4749, 122, 138139, 291294
Hans, Nicholas, 9, 18, 19, 42, 49, 51, 52, varying degrees of success as RMS
55, 62, 8283, 85, 148, 221, 224 master, 139140
Harris, Daniel, 146147, 158, 162, 218, Holland (The Netherlands), 7, 1317, 62,
219, 228 79, 194
Hebrew, 4, 6, 8, 19, 62, 65, 81 Naval strength of, 1314, 16, 27, 28,
Hindu-Arabic numerals, 4, 7, 96, 147, 219 213
Hodgson, James, 810, 20, 25, 26, 38, 39, Hooke, Robert, 8, 9, 20, 25, 26, 30, 3336,
41, 42, 4753, 5556, 70, 96, 105, 106, 41, 44, 70, 80, 156, 216
110, 111, 117, 121142, 145, 146, 148, Disputes with Isaac Newton, 36
155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 162, 186, 188, Howson, A. Geoffrey, 10, 28, 49, 55, 85,
193, 195, 201207, 211, 212, 215, 218, 98, 142, 196, 212, 222, 223
219, 221, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228, Hunt, Leigh, 53, 145, 149, 151152, 155,
291294 157, 160, 161
Subject Index 321
J Longitude, 31, 37, 39, 47, 52, 91, 94, 135,

James II, King, 15, 27, 28, 30, 79, 83, 121, 161, 215, 248, 252, 254, 293294
136, 158, 214, 228 Louis XIV, King, 15, 83, 212
Jefferson, Thomas, 10
Jones, William, 38, 49, 52, 122, 218 M
Mansell, Ken, 147, 148, 150, 151, 160, 224
K Mason-Dixon line, 52, 146, 218
Karp, Alexander, 7, 10, 8284, 212, 220, Masters of RMS, 810, 20, 25, 26, 2934,
222, 282287 3639, 4144, 49, 50, 5255, 63,
6568, 7073, 75, 77, 78, 80, 85,
L 9094, 96, 100106, 111, 113117,
Lag-time, 10, 193208 122124, 126, 128131, 137, 139142,
concept of, 195196 145148, 150153, 155, 156, 158162,
use in other disciplines, 195 165166, 186, 194, 196, 212225, 237,
Lamb, Charles, 53, 142, 145, 149153, 242244, 291
155, 157, 160, 161 Mechanics (Force and Motion), 37, 44, 46,
famous commentary on RMS, 150151 49, 84, 94, 95, 104, 105, 166, 171, 176,
Latin, 1, 34, 6, 8, 10, 16, 19, 20, 29, 31, 193, 196200, 205, 206, 248250, 252,
32, 34, 38, 4647, 49, 5556, 62, 254, 256
6467, 71, 73, 74, 79, 80, 84, 91, 96, Merchant marine, 1620, 52, 61, 78, 122,
101, 105, 114, 115, 122126, 129, 136, 125, 137, 146, 161, 194, 196, 197, 206,
142, 147, 155, 157, 167, 172, 174, 177, 213, 214, 223, 225, 228, 238
183, 186189, 199201, 205, 215217, Moore, Jonas, 8, 9, 15, 20, 25, 26, 2932,
224, 225, 228, 237, 239242, 251, 252, 37, 44, 55, 6163, 6668, 71, 7880,
271, 273 90. 92, 101104, 124, 136, 147, 158,
Leeke, John, 3031, 34, 6368, 70, 79, 194, 211214, 217, 226, 239, 240, 255,
9092, 100102, 115, 117, 158, 217, 256
242
Leiden, 16, 62 N
Logarithms, 7, 31, 32, 37, 38, 51, 54, 62, Navigation Acts, 1315, 28
67, 78, 84, 91, 95, 97, 130, 134, 135, Navigation education, 7, 9, 1320, 28, 31,
154, 158, 185, 187, 193, 206, 207, 212, 35, 37, 3946, 49, 5153, 55, 61, 65,
213, 215, 247, 255 83, 84, 89, 9195, 97, 100, 103111,
London, 13, 6, 7, 1315, 17, 18, 27, 28, 113117, 121, 122, 124, 125, 129131,
31, 3336, 38, 39, 44, 47, 48, 52, 62, 135138, 140, 145148, 152154,
67, 81, 82, 84, 89, 98, 102, 113, 122, 157159, 161, 165, 167, 172174, 184,
157, 159, 181, 186, 188, 189, 193194, 185, 187, 188, 194, 196, 197, 199201,
213, 215, 219, 221, 223, 227, 237, 254, 205, 206, 212223, 225, 227, 241, 248,
257 249, 252256, 274, 275, 291294
Great Fire (1666), 13, 1719, 26, 27, Navy (Royal), 1320, 28, 51, 61, 65, 77,
31, 65, 81, 157, 213 78, 80, 82, 83, 114, 121, 125, 137, 141,
Medway, 14, 15, 2527 146, 161, 186, 193, 194, 196, 206, 212,
Newgate Street, 1 213, 215225, 228, 238, 246, 291294
Plague (1665), 13, 15, 19, 27, 81 (The) Netherlands (see Holland)
population data, 2, 13 New Amsterdam (New York), 13, 28
322 Subject Index
Newcastle Royal Commission Pearces (1901) unbalanced commentaries

(18581861), 168 on the work of RMS masters, 75, 87,
New Mathematical School (at Christs 9394, 116117, 119, 120, 123, 129,
Hospital), 38, 4447, 74, 84, 121, 130, 141, 142, 145146, 148150, 152,
124128, 136, 200201, 215, 216 153, 155162, 212, 219, 222, 225227
Newton, Isaac, 7, 8, 25, 26, 31, 3339, Pepys, Samuel, 1, 68, 1520, 2529, 31,
4147, 49, 52, 55, 68, 7173, 7780, 3436, 38, 39, 4244, 49, 54, 6173,
8385, 93, 94, 98, 103, 105, 116, 117, 7781, 83, 85, 86, 90, 9295, 98, 104,
121, 122, 124, 126, 134, 136, 139, 147, 105, 115, 117, 121, 136, 147, 156159,
155, 156, 158, 193, 196201, 205208, 186, 188, 194, 196, 201, 206, 211216,
211, 212, 215218, 226, 228, 247257 228, 237246
(Appendix B) and defects and remedies for RMS, 29,
and his fluxions, 134, 139, 201 42, 6169, 104, 105, 115, 147, 156,
argues for more time to be given to 157, 212, 237246
the RMS program, 38, 199200, 252 and Trinity House, 1520, 64, 66, 68,
comments on RMS curriculum, 38, 73, 7779, 93, 104, 159, 194, 196,
7778, 80, 93, 104, 117, 196200, 214, 216, 217
216218, 226, 228, 249, 259 lack of knowledge of mathematics, 19,
disputes with Robert Hooke, 36, 42 28, 79, 92, 117, 158, 213, 225
misjudgment of student capacity to lack of direct experience as a navigator,
learn, 38, 8081, 158, 200, 206, 19, 28, 92
207, 215, 225 portrait of, 27
wants Latin in RMS course, 38, 73, 79, role in establishing RMS, 1517, 26,
80, 84, 122, 215, 228, 252 44, 49, 55, 78, 80, 82, 83, 86, 194,
wants mechanics in the RMS course, 212, 214216
84, 85, 94, 104, 197200, 249250, Perkins, Peter, 31, 37, 41, 44, 67, 7071,
254 92, 102, 103, 115, 158, 217219
Newton, Samuel, 38, 42, 49, 70, 7277, 79, portrait of, 71
9294, 97. 104105, 115117, 215, Public schools 167
219, 228 and Christs Hospital, 167
New York, 13, 15, 28, 96 Clarendon Commission, 168
Charterhouse, 168
P Eton, 6, 167, 168
Paget, Edward, 3638, 68, 7072, 7880, Harrow, 6, 168
92, 93, 103104, 115, 126, 128, 158, Rugby, 168
193, 196, 201, 206208, 217219, 228, Shrewsbury, 168
254256, 281 St. Pauls, 6, 28
Pearce, Rev. Ernest H. 155, 226 Westminster, 7, 32, 168
Pearces (1901) history of Christs Winchester, 132, 168
Hospital, 2, 9, 28, 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 49,
53, 55, 66, 73, 77, 78, 82, 87, 93, 94, R
100, 105, 106, 109, 112114, 116, 123, Raffles, Benjamin, 51
129, 130, 141117, 119121, 127, 128, Ramsey, Mary (Dame), 56
139, 142, 145, 148150, 152, 153, Ramus, Petrus, 65
155158, 161, 162, 168, 200, 212, 218, Recitation, 6, 79, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104,
219, 222, 224, 226, 227 154, 222, 286
Subject Index 323
Research questions, 1, 7, 10, 211223 183188, 193, 195, 196, 201205,

Robertson, John, 8, 9, 25, 26, 5052, 96, 208, 212, 219, 228
105, 110, 111, 121, 131, 137, 140, 146, intended, 9, 20, 31, 3439, 42, 6162,
153, 154, 158, 161, 218, 219, 223, 224, 66, 7781, 84, 8997, 99, 101, 103,
228, 281 113117, 121, 131136, 146, 158,
and his The Elements of Navigation, 51, 159, 170, 171, 173, 183, 193,
96, 105, 111, 146, 153, 154, 161, 196208, 210, 213, 214, 219, 228,
224, 281 247257, 271279
librarian for the Royal Society, 51, 146 received, 9, 1820, 29, 62, 6467,
replaces James Hodgson, 50, 52, 218 7181, 89, 113117, 121, 123, 129,
RNA master, 52, 218 131, 140, 147, 154, 159, 183188,
Royal Hospital School (Greenwich), 136, 196, 207, 212
138 establishment of, 1420, 2338, 6163,
Royal Mathematical School (at Christs 78, 8081, 156, 157, 165, 193,
Hospital London), 1, 2, 710, 1320, 212217, 222, 227, 228, 237246
2556, 6185, 89117, 121142, journals (logs) in cyphering books,
145162, 165, 166, 168, 188, 189, 92, 94, 95, 99, 111, 137, 184
193208, 211229, 259269, 291 offers mathematics for the people
ages of students, 7, 17, 19, 20, 55, 62, 6163, 194195, 212, 216,
65, 78, 84, 92, 96, 98, 114, 124, 221223, 228
129130, 156, 158, 160, 172, 174, pedagogical issues, 29, 39, 55, 62,
181183, 193, 194, 197, 200, 201, 6570, 7380, 85, 90, 100110,
205208, 210, 212, 213, 216, 217, 121122, 124, 128, 139, 174, 188,
220, 223, 227, 240241, 250 215218, 221224, 228, 237246,
claims that early RMS masters were 291294
poor teachers, 20, 29, 39, 55, 6170, recognition of (in Great Britain and in
7280, 8485, 8992, 100105, other nations), 1819, 55, 62, 77,
130, 140141, 156, 158159, 212, 8284, 138, 146, 148, 155, 157,
217219, 227228, 291 161, 196, 212, 218, 221, 224, 228,
competes with the Grammar School, 1, 248, 285
19, 55, 6165, 6769, 8081, 100, run-away students, and poor behavior
114, 123126, 129, 130, 136, 142, of students, 51, 80, 129, 148,
145, 147150, 155158, 160162, 225
165170, 175177, 180, 183, some graduates go to other nations, 18,
186188, 194, 196, 199, 200, 205, 83, 146, 188
212, 214, 215, 224, 226, 228, 238, Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, 26, 50,
242, 261, 264, 269, 271 51, 137, 138, 142, 146, 158, 218
curriculum, 9, 13, 16, 42, 55, 7879, Royal Society, 8, 25, 26, 28, 30, 3236,
8987, 90117, 130136, 146148, 4043, 48, 5052, 61, 63, 7072, 121,
154, 156, 158, 159, 165, 167, 170, 122, 139, 145, 146
183, 184, 186189, 193201, Rule(s) of three, 6, 8, 19, 20, 54, 62, 64,
205207, 215, 217218, 225, 227, 65, 67, 79, 81, 84, 91, 93, 97, 99, 111,
237257, 259269, 271279 147, 165, 175, 177, 182, 183, 216,
implemented, 7, 9, 20, 35, 41, 55, 64, 218220
65, 67, 71, 72, 79, 89, 90, 96113, Russia, 7, 18, 77, 8284, 86, 138, 146, 212,
129, 146, 153154, 158, 159, 161, 282
324 Subject Index
S 217, 221, 225, 247, 252, 254256, 260,

Sailing, 7, 35, 37, 38, 51, 52, 54, 62, 78, 91, 267, 272, 274, 275, 292294
92, 94, 95, 106, 107, 109, 135, 140, 158, spherical, 14, 37, 46, 51, 52, 54, 62, 75,
194, 213, 217, 248, 253, 275, 291294 78, 92, 95, 106109, 130, 154, 158,
current, 51 166, 198, 217, 220, 225, 248, 255,
globular, 51 256
great-circle, 51, 91, 94, 95, 135, 253 Trinity House, 8, 9, 13, 15, 18, 20, 26, 28,
Mercators, 35, 51, 52, 92, 94, 95, 109, 29, 38, 39, 50, 54, 55, 61, 64, 6668,
116, 135, 253, 291294 7180, 8995, 101, 103, 105, 113117,
meridional, 135, 293, 294 121, 123, 124, 129, 131, 145, 147, 159,
middle latitude, 51, 140 161, 184, 194, 196, 214, 216, 218, 222,
oblique, 51, 92, 95, 106, 107, 292 225, 237, 239, 243, 244, 246, 251
parallel, 51, 135 Trollope, Arthur William, 150, 166, 168
plane (or plain), 51, 91, 95, 135, 248, Trollope, William, 129, 162, 165, 218, 219,
253, 275, 292293 222, 226, 227
traverse, 92, 95, 135, 292293 Trollopes (1834) history of Christs
Scholarships (or exhibitions), 46, 17, 149, Hospital, 3, 4, 9, 15, 28, 30, 49, 53, 55,
150, 166, 170, 172, 188, 260, 268 70, 77, 78, 82, 100, 123, 129130, 141,
Secondary school mathematics, 8, 65, 66, 145, 149, 150, 152, 153, 155, 156, 189,
207, 208, 212, 220222, 227, 228 212, 218, 219, 222, 226, 227
Stars in the RMS firmament, 8, 2556, 156 Trollopes (1834) unbalanced
Stevin, Simon, 16, 79 commentaries on RMS masters,
129130, 142, 145, 148150, 152, 153,
T 162, 189, 226227
Taunton Royal Commission (18641868),
8, 165189, 219, 221, 259269, U
271279 Understanding mathematics, 6, 8, 19, 79,
Aware of past greatness of RMS, 189 97, 102, 104, 115, 117, 126, 157, 161,
Purpose of, 168, 219 184, 186, 206, 207, 215, 219, 248,
Schools investigated, 168, 219 292294
Supported classical education, 167, University of Cambridge, 36, 8, 16, 19,
183, 186, 188 28, 3739, 71, 81, 85, 89, 93, 103, 124,
Visit to Christs Hospital, 169 125, 149, 150, 157, 165167, 169, 183,
Temple, Frederick, 170, 172, 177, 178, 186, 188, 194, 218, 223, 237, 254,
181, 182, 262, 265, 266, 268 259
Textbooks, 9, 19, 26, 3032, 38, 39, 41, 42, Scholarships to Christs Hospital
44, 51, 6668, 71, 7981, 89, 90, 92, students, 45, 8, 16, 166, 172, 188,
93, 96, 98106, 110111, 124126, 268
130, 146, 147, 153, 154, 171, 173, 177, Christs Hospital students prepared for,
178, 193, 201208, 214, 217, 219222, 4, 8, 16, 19, 81, 125, 149, 150, 157,
224, 228, 255, 271279, 285 165, 166, 169, 170, 175, 176, 186,
Trigonometry, 31, 32, 38, 46, 51, 54, 62, 187, 189, 194, 218, 222, 261,
75, 78, 84, 95, 105, 122, 130, 134135, 263
154, 158, 166, 170, 171, 173176, 181, Tripos Mathematical Examination, 166,
193, 201204, 206208, 211213, 215, 167, 169, 183, 223, 259, 260
Subject Index 325
University of Oxford, 36, 8, 3133, 42, Robertson and Wales navigation

43, 71, 72, 81, 85, 89, 93, 101, 106, textbook, 146, 154, 161
108, 109, 124, 125, 149, 166, 186, 188, unbalanced commentaries on his work
194, 220, 223, 254, 281 as RMS master, 9, 53, 141, 142,
146147, 150153, 155156,
V 158159, 161162
Vantage points (for research), 145, 153, Walkingame, Francis, 99, 111, 220, 222
155, 211, 212, 227 Wardhaugh, Benjamin, 98, 154, 220, 224,
Verrio, Antonio 286, 287
paintings of, 68. 69, 70, 104, 148, 155, Webster, Reverend William, 167169,
227228, 281 219221, 259269
Vulgar fractions, 37, 92, 94, 95, 97, 106, beliefs about education, 173174, 182,
116, 175, 181, 206, 220, 247, 253, 255, 183, 186, 221222
263, 266, 279 evidence before Taunton Royal
Commission, 168183, Appendix C
W Head of Mathematical School, 169, 259
Wales, William, 8107, 25, 26, 5254, 77, naval boys in the RMS, 172175,
90, 121, 130, 141, 142, 145162, 211, 183188, 219220, 260266, 269
212, 218, 219, 224226, 228 West, James, 153154
and Captain James Cook, 52, 142, 145, Weston, Thomas, 41, 136, 138
150, 152, 153, 159, 161 Wilkins, John, 32
and Harrisons H4 and Kendalls K-4 Wilson, Douglas, 10
chronometers, 52 Wood, Robert, 70, 71, 79, 141, 158
and the Grammar School, 53, 130, 145, Wren, Christopher, 8, 13, 17, 20, 25, 26,
148150, 161 30, 3235, 47, 71, 72, 80, 98, 156, 216
early work in Canada, 52, 145, and Christs Hospital, 17, 20, 25, 26,
161 34, 71, 72, 80, 98, 156, 216, 226
effectiveness of his teaching, 53, 77, architect, 17
147148, 150151, 153154, President of the Royal Society, 32
158161 portrait of, 33
grandfather of the Reverend William Writing School, 3, 4, 67, 19, 45, 50, 52,
Trollope, 130, 150, 153, 159160, 62, 6466, 75, 79, 80, 98100, 125,
162 147, 156, 165, 189, 213, 216, 218, 219,
image of, 53 224, 238, 241

Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, and The Beginnings of Secondary School Mathematics

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Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, James Hodgson, and The Beginnings of Secondary School Mathematics

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History of Mathematics Education

Samuel Pepys, Isaac

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13545

Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton,

Foreword by Benjamin Wardhaugh

ISSN 2509-9736 ISSN 2509-9744 (electronic)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959406

Springer International Publishing AG 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature

Benjamin Wardhaugh July 2016

Foreword (by Benjamin Wardhaugh)................................................................................... v

1 Mathematics in the Christs Hospital Curriculum Before 1673......................................... 1

2 Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic: Expanding the Domain of School

3 Stars in the RMS Firmament 16731798 ............................................................................. 25

4 Years of Struggle for RMS 16731708 ................................................................................. 61

5 Developments in RMS Curricula 16731798 ..................................................................... 89

6 RMS Comes of Age 17091755: The Hodgson Era .......................................................... 121

7 William Wales: RMS Master 17761798 ......................................................................... 145

9 An Appropriate Theoretical Lens: Lag Time .................................................................. 193

Short Biographies of the Authors ............................................................................................. 233

Combined List of References ................................................................................................... 295

Table 1.1 Scholarships Available to Christs Hospital Students to Attend

Individual Chapter Abstracts

Chapter 2: Mathematics Beyond Arithmetic: Expanding the Domain of School

Chapter 3: Stars in the RMS Firmament 16731798

Chapter 4: Years of Struggle for RMS 16731708

Chapter 5: Developments in RMS Curricula 16731798

Chapter 6: RMS Comes of Age 17091755: The Hodgson Era

Chapter 7: William Wales: RMS Master 17761798

Chapter 8: Redefining School Mathematics at Christs Hospital 18001868

Chapter 9: An Appropriate Theoretical Lens: Lag Time

5. What was the role of cyphering in RMSs implemented curriculum?

Nerida F. Ellerton (ellerton@ilstu.edu)

Keywords: Apprenticeship, Blue-coat school, Christs Hospital, Ciphering tradition,

In the Beginning: Christs Hospital 15521673

Springer International Publishing AG 2017 1

It would be inappropriate here to provide a detailed analysis of how those questions

The Writing School at Christs Hospital

Six Main Research Questions Addressed in this Book

The Main Arguments Presented in this Book

Code CLC/210/G/BRB/041/MS13583. (Document held in the London Metropolitan

Karp, A. (2014). Mathematics education in Russia. In A. Karp & G. Schubring (Eds.),

Springer International Publishing AG 2017 13

Abstract: This chapter identifies a firmament of 10 RMS starscomprising Samuel Pepys,

Keywords: Christs Hospital, Christopher Wren, Edmond Halley, History of school

Springer International Publishing AG 2017 25

The Guiding Star: Samuel Pepys

The Morning Star: Jonas Moore

An Influential Star: Christopher Wren

Figure 3.3. Portrait of Christopher Wren (c. 1690), by John Closterman

An Unusual Star: Robert Hooke

The Most Commanding Star: Isaac Newton

Figure 3.4. Portrait of Isaac Newton, by Godfrey Kneller, 1702

The Star-Finder: John Flamsteed

The Shooting Star: Edmond Halley

The Falling Star: The Outsider, Humfrey Ditton

A Treatise on Spherical Catoptrics, published in the Philosophical Transactions

The Shining Star: James Hodgson

Hauksbees improvements). Microscopes of the best contrivance, telescopes of a

The Supporting Star: John Robertson

The Most Celebrated Star: William Wales

The Contribution of RMS to the History of School Mathematics, Seen from an