King Henry VIII Grammar School, Abergavenny, Monmouthshire was one of a series of schools founded during the Reformation in England and Wales in 1542 from property seized from monasteries and religious congregations. In this case, a school which had been associated with the local Priory Church was administered by the (now Protestant) state instead.
The school provided free education to boys in the local area who passed an entrance examination. The school motto was "Ut Prosim" ("That I may be of service") and school colours were red and blue. The school was divided into two houses, Oppidan and Rustican, from the Latin for Town and Country.
The school was merged with the local Girls' High School in 1963 and later became a comprehensive school when selection at 11 was abolished. The school is now operating as King Henry VIII School Abergavenny.
A former pupil of the school, David Lewis, was the first Principal of Jesus College, Oxford. Amongst other distinguished pupils, well-known writer and critic Raymond Williams gave a fictionalised account of his time there in the novel "Border Country"
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“An illiterate king is a crowned ass.”
—Medieval English proverb.
Said by the chronicler William of Malmesbury to have been much used by King Henry I of England (1068-1135)
““I see nobody on the road,” said Alice.
“I only wish I had such eyes,” the King remarked in a fretful tone. “To be able to see Nobody! And at that distance too! Why, it’s as much as I can do to see real people, by this light!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Science is, I believe, nothing but trained and organized common sense, differing from the latter only as a veteran may”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast
crowned him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm VIII (l. VIII, 5–6)
“I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)