ABSTRACT
In 1870 the public schools, after twenty years of steady progress, stood at the beginning of their greatest era of prestige and success. The Clarendon Commission (1861–4) had examined the nine great schools—Eton, Winchester, Westminster, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury, Charterhouse, plus the two London day schools, St Paul's and Merchant Taylors—though only the first seven were covered by the Public Schools Act of 1868. In addition to the Clarendon schools a number of old grammar schools, like Tonbridge, Repton, and Sherborne, had been moving, under able headmasters, towards public school status, which was also rapidly acquired by many of the Victorian foundations like Cheltenham (1840), Marlborough (1843), and Wellington (1859). By the end of the century the public school community consisted of about 100 schools, made up from the same three groups, though these differed widely in status and importance among themselves.
