Thomas Farnaby - Schoolmaster

Schoolmaster

He opened his own school in Goldsmiths Rents, Cripplegate, London at the beginning of the seventeenth century. This school was a success, in terms of reputation and also financially, and had many pupils, drawing on the sons of nobility. He had boarders as well as day scholars, held his classes in a large garden-house, and joined several houses and gardens together to meet the needs of his establishment. He had a small staff at work with him; in 1630 William Burton (1609–1657), a well-known antiquarian scholar, was one of his assistants. Sir John Bramston the younger, with his brothers, Mountfort and Francis, were among his boarders, and he described the school in his autobiography. Sir Richard Fanshawe, Alexander Gill, and Henry Birkhead were also Farnaby's pupils.

From this school, which had as many as 300 pupils, there issued, says Wood, more churchmen and statesmen than from any school taught by one man in England. In the course of his London career he was made master of arts of Cambridge, and soon after was incorporated at Oxford.

Such was his success that he was enabled to buy an estate at Otford near Sevenoaks, Kent, to which he retired from London in 1636, while carrying on as schoolmaster. In course of time he added to his Otford estate and bought another near Horsham in Sussex.