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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
Many schools in England have long histories, but few can rival that of Reading School, stretching from before the foundation of Reading Abbey to the present day, broken only by four years in the middle of the last century when it had to be reconstituted on a fresh site. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, its learned schoolmaster Leonard Cox, who was a friend of Erasmus, was given letters patent to keep on the school, and it was on this rather ad-hoc basis that the school was run for many years. In 1640, Archbishop Laud, a former pupil, endowed the school with an extra £20 per annum to assure the master of a decent salary, and arranged for triennial visitations from Oxford to check on progress. Despite these careful arrangements and endowments, the school fell on hard times, and when Dr. Valpy came to be head in 1781 he found little comfort, few sound traditions, and fewer possibilities for development.
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