Comments & Editorials 04
Foreword (1957)

(The following excerpt from the Vice-Provost's speech at the prize-giving ceremony was chosen by him to introduce this edition of the Magazine.)

IN 1441, when King Henry VI founded the King's College of Blessed Mary and St. Nicholas at Cambridge, he gave it, as its earliest endowment, the manor of Ruislip "with a place called Northwood". That ancient connection is fittingly commemorated in the name of St. Nicholas Grammar School; for St. Nicholas School at Northwood, like King's College at Cambridge is a place of education in the liberal arts and sciences. King Henry, in his time, founded grammar schools as well as colleges; and on the grammar schools his colleges were to rely - as they must still rely - for the recruitment of their members. This school, I believe, King Henry would have welcomed, and fostered with his royal blessing. It is equipped with a sumptuousness which schools in his day could never know. Its library, which must be the heart and core of every grammar school, has books in a plenty of which he never dreamed; and here boys will studly in liberal arts and sciences which in his day were not begun. Yet here are the things which he knew and loved the music and the arts which he loved so well, and the reading of good books, to which he gave what time he could spare from the business of the realm. And here the purpose which he set before him is to be carried onward as he would have wished: to train boys up to do those things which in themselves are worth the doing, and to do them with zeal and might and loving care and to help them to discover the talents that are in them, and how to use them aright. May the years that are to come bring this school all success. May it find, what King Henry sought for his schools and colleges, the best living stones with which to build: boys excellently equipped with character and ability, and teachers as well endowed. May it bring forth men who, when their time on earth is done, may look back on lives for which the world has been the better.

JOHN SALTMARSH