Nothing is known about the origins of the office of Captain of School. There are however plenty of references to monitors. The revised Cathedral Statutes of 1637, issued by Archbishop Laud, established monitors at the School. They were to be chosen from the ‘steadier pupils’ (gravioribus discipulis) and their duties were: “to keep an eye on the behaviour of the other boys as well in Church as in School and elsewhere lest anything unseemly or disgraceful be done”.

The first Captain of School we know of for certain was Charles Abbott in 1779-81. A nephew in his life of the future Baron Tenterden and Lord Chief Justice noted that “Young Abbott in due course became Head Monitor of the school” – and added “as such, by the by, he was found eminently useful”. As the son of a barber in the Cathedral Precinct, his rise to fame was particularly notable.

A few others from the next 50 years can definitely be named. Family records state that William Chafy became “Captain of the School April 5 1794”. George Gilbert in his amiably informative reminiscences explained that “the Senior boy” delivered the speech on the School Feast day, as he did in 1813, though he added “or if he had spoken on the previous year, by the next in seniority”. The Feast Society accounts refer to a payment of 2 guineas to the boy who ‘spoke the oration’ from 1762 onwards. It may be therefore that most of these, but clearly not all, were also Captains of School. It is only from the 1840s onwards that Speech Day programmes, school lists and finally the rotulus enable us to link office and name with certainty.

What generalisation can be made about this august body? From 1813 to 1900 half went on to become clergymen. In the 20th and early 21st centuries there have been much more varied choices of career. In the early 20th century, experience of leadership came at a cost. Five of the thirteen Captains of School from 1901 to 1915 – Edward Roper, Roland Brinsley-Richards, Charles Adams, Charles Kidson and William Janson Potts – were to be killed in the First World War. Four Captains have so far made it into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: Charles Abbott (1779-81), William Chafy (1794-96), William Nassau Molesworth (1835) and Sir Frederick Bovenschen (1901-03. More will undoubtedly follow.

This article appeared as a feature in the Spring 2025 OKS Magazine. To read the full issue, please click here.