CHAPTER VIIIBobbin Day, so called by the statute of the Founders from the bobbin on which the yarn for weaving hose was wound, was an institution as old as the original Hosiers’ Boys’ School. It also, by a pretty conceit probably more appreciated in the sixteenth than the twentieth century, commemorated the first name of Robert Shuttleworth, Master of the Honourable Company of Hosiers from 1536 to 1539, during which time he managed to do so well for the Company in the way of abbey lands that they resolved to found a grammar school for boys whose parents lived within the bounds of St. Hosius Without. The original purpose of the school had long been lost, and some forty years previously a girls’ school had been endowed from some of the vast accumulated wealth of the Hosiers’ Company, but som
