Merchant Taylors' School is an 11–18 boys' public day school, founded in 1561 in London. The school has occupied various campuses. Since 1933 it has been at Sandy Lodge, a site close to Northwood in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire. The school has 1100 students between the ages of 11 and 18. The school is an all-through school from age 3 to 18 after merging with Northwood Prep School in 2015. it was one of the nine English public schools investigated by the Clarendon Commission set up in 1861, and successfully argued that it should be omitted from the Public Schools Act 1868, as did St Paul's School, London, the other day school investigated by the Clarendon Commission.
History
Establishment, 1561
The school was founded in 1561 by Thomas White of the Merchant Taylors' Company in a manor house in the parish of St Lawrence Pountney in the City of London, where it remained until 1875.
A curious account survives of a rent payment ritual in London for the Merchant Taylors School in which Sir Rowland Hill, the Lord Mayor of London in 1549 who had coordinated the Geneva Bible translation, presided shortly before he died<blockquote>The xxx day of September my lord mayre and the althermen and the new shreyffes took ther barges at the iij cranes in the Vintre and so to Westmynster, and so into the Cheker, and ther took ther hoythe; and ser Rowland Hyll whent up, and master Hoggys toke ser Rowland Hyll a choppyng kneyf, and one dyd hold a whyt rod, and he with the kneyf cute the rod in sunder a-for all the pepull; and after to London to ther plases to dener, my lord mayre and all the althermen and mony worshiphulle men.</blockquote>Merchant Taylors' was not the first school to be founded by members of the Merchant Taylors' Company. Sir John Percival (Master of the Company in 1485, Lord Mayor of London in 1498) established a grammar school at Macclesfield in 1502, while in 1508 his widow founded one at St. Mary's Wike in Cornwall (which moved to Launceston shortly thereafter). Also in 1508, Sir Steven Jenyns (Master in 1490, Lord Mayor in 1508) founded Wolverhampton Grammar School, which still maintains strong links with the company.
The first Head Master, Richard Mulcaster, took up his post in 1561; one of the houses at Merchant Taylors' is now named after him. His educational philosophy is embodied in two books, The Positions (1581) and The Elementarie (1582), the latter an instalment of a larger work and one of the first dictionaries in English. One of his first pupils was Edmund Spenser. His goal was that English as a language might claim its place side by side with Latin: