School Years
Willoughby Cotton entered Rugby School at the age of 12 in 1795. Cotton, aged 14, was a ringleader in the “Great Rebellion” of November 1797. Aggrieved by the attitude of the Head Master, Dr. Henry Ingles (1794–1806), to the breaking of a window, students blew his classroom door off and followed this by burning desks and books upon the close, before retreating to the Island (a Bronze Age burial mound surrounded by a moat. Ingles called in the local militia, whereupon the Riot Act was read and the island taken. Soldiers stole round to the rear, and wading across the moat, drawn sword in hand, took the whole party prisoners. Cotton was among the students to be expelled as a result of this confrontation.
Read more about this topic: Willoughby Cotton
Famous quotes containing the words school and/or years:
“A man of sense and energy, the late head of the Farm School in Boston Harbor, said to me, “I want none of your good boys,Mgive me the bad ones.” And this is the reason, I suppose, why, as soon as the children are good, the mothers are scared, and think they are going to die.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In most nineteenth-century cities, both large and small, more than 50 percent—and often up to 75 percent—of the residents in any given year were no longer there ten years later. People born in the twentieth century are much more likely to live near their birthplace than were people born in the nineteenth century.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)