Richard Mulcaster

Richard Mulcaster (ca. 1531, Carlisle, Cumberland – 15 April 1611, Essex) is known best for his headmasterships of Merchant Taylors' School and St Paul's School, both then in London, and for his pedagogic writings. He is often regarded as the founder of English language lexicography. He was also an Anglican priest.

Early life

Mulcaster was possibly born in 1530 or 1531 in Brackenhill Castle. He was the son of William Mulcaster.

Education

In 1561 he became the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School in London, where he wrote his two treatises on education, Positions wherin Those Primitive Circumstances be Examined, which are Necessarie for the Training Up of Children, either for Skill in Their Booke, or Health in Their Bodie (1581) and Elementarie (1582). Merchant Taylors' School was at that time the largest school in the country, and Mulcaster worked to establish a rigorous curriculum which was to set the standard for education in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He was the mentor of Lancelot Andrewes, later Dean of Westminster, who kept the subject's portrait above his study door.

Church employments

He was vicar of Cranbrook in Kent in 1590, rector of the ancient church of St Margaret's in Stanford Rivers in Essex, and was presented by the Queen as prebendary of Yatesbury in Wiltshire in January 1592.

Writings

Mulcaster’s most enduring work, Elementarie, was published in 1582. For the most part, it is a guide to good practice in teaching, particularly in the teaching of English. At a time when Latin still held all of the prestige in education, Mulcaster made a convincing case for the huge potential of English to serve all of the functions that were at that time reserved for Latin, calling for it to be more widely used and, crucially, respected. Elementarie is, in this respect, a call to national pride: "forenners and strangers do wonder at vs, both for the vncertaintie in our writing, and the inconstancie in our letters." Provoking a movement that was to lead, ultimately, to English being the language of learning in the English-speaking world, the Elementarie argues "I do not think that anie language, … is better able to utter all arguments, either with more pith, or greater planesse, than our English tung is." However, Mulcaster goes on to remind people of the need for the language to be codified and learnt, as Latin had thus far been: only "if the English utterer be as skillfull in the matter, which he is to utter" can English rival Latin.