History
The establishment of the College was funded principally by the Bishop Barrow Trust, originally set up in 1668 to provide education in the Isle of Man. When founded in 1833, the College opened its doors with only forty-six boys. The shield in the centre of the College's coat of arms is that of Bishop Isaac Barrow. The school was named after King William IV, who is said to have been asked for a financial contribution and to have offered the founders "my most valuable possession, my name".
The school features, thinly disguised, in the Victorian schoolboy book Eric, or, Little by Little by Dean Farrar who had himself been a boy at the school.
Read more about this topic: King William's College
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)
“The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)