No.129
The Trusty Servant
Discipline vs. Liberty:
Warden Huntingford and the 1793 Rebellion
Laurence Guymer (History, since 2010)
writes:
George Huntingford was Warden
of Winchester College (1789-1832)
during a tumultuous period in British
and European history. His tenure
began with the French Revolution,
and ended with the passage of the
Great Reform Act. As tutor, Fellow,
and then Warden at Winchester,
Huntingford worked to create and
perpetuate a value system centred
on character, duty, tradition,
industry, and a code of honour. He
endeavoured to ensure stability,
discipline, and order within the
school. It was, he wrote, of ‘great
National Importance that the rising
generation be virtuously educated’.
The Warden, Fellows, and masters of
Winchester had to work to preserve
the morals of ‘young men, sons of
the best families in the kingdom’.
These Wykehamists, Huntingford
hoped, would maintain everything
that was good about patriarchal,
hierarchical, English society and
the Anglican-dominated political-
religious constitution established with
the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.
By the late 1780s Winchester had a
poor reputation. Dr Joseph Warton
had been Headmaster since 1766.
Though accounts of him as a useless
schoolmaster, more interested in
poetry and literary criticism, are
exaggerated, he was, nevertheless,
not the disciplinarian the school
required. The Fellows of New College
elected Huntingford as Warden of
Winchester in 1789. Their decision
was influenced largely by HR Berkely
and George Heathcote, Fellows who
appreciated the possibilities associated
with Huntingford’s connection to the
the specious name of Liberality.’
Huntingford concurred; he set out
to act according to the dictates of his
conscience and ‘without regard for
popularity.’ He aimed at restoring
discipline and order in the school.
He planned to wrestle back some
power from the prefects. No doubt,
he still recalled the minor rebellion
of 1774, when the Collegemen had
demanded his dismissal as commoner
tutor and had hissed and booed the
Headmaster.
Speaker of the House of Commons
(and future Prime Minister), his
close friend and former pupil, Henry
Addington.
Life for the Wykehamists in the 1780s
was grim. There was never enough
food, and the boys were neglected
by the masters and abused by the
prefects. As a pupil, Addington
himself had run away from
Winchester, bullied mercilessly. Under
Warton, discipline was almost non-
existent; the tyranny of the prefects
went unchecked. They resented any
encroachment upon their arbitrary
power.
Huntingford agreed with the
headmaster and priest, Samuel
Parr, that there ‘must be numerous
& great changes in the minds of
parents & of boys in the … discipline
of their schools.’ Having run the
Colchester Royal Grammar School
and Norwich Grammar School, Parr
saw what ‘greater necessity there is
for resistance to that fashionable
relaxation which shelters itself under
6
One of his first actions as Warden was
to deny the prefects the right to tund
(beat) the junior boys. He was also
an active presence at the ‘Scrutinies’
– regular consultations of the boys
by the Warden and two Fellows. In
1790, there were three Scrutinies.
Huntingford asked the boys the
following questions:
1. Have you any complaint to make?
2. Are your provisions good?
3. Is your beer good?
4. Are your chambers & Hall kept
clean?
5. Are the boys in your Chamber
regular & diligent?
6. Are the inferior boys treated with
tenderness?
Having listened to the boys’ answers,
he recommended that each prefect
should provide his own candles and
soap rather than expect the juniors
to do it. It ‘was more liberal that
way’. He enquired at the next three
Scrutinies if the prefects had adopted
his recommendation. He made sure
they did. Huntingford had a battle
on his hands. There was ‘nothing
more difficult than to recover the
Reigns [sic] & bring a set of wild Colts
into regular subordination’ when
they were used to having everything