MULCASTER, RICHARD, a distinguished scholar of the sixteenth century, was born at Carlisle about 1535. He received his elementary education at Eton under the celebrated Udal, and entered King's College, Cambridge, in 1548. He removed to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1555, and took his degree in arts during the following year. He began to teach in 1559, and from his great reputation for philological attainments, was chosen in 1561 first master of Merchant Tailors' School, London, then just established. For a period of twenty-five years he continued "to fill St John's College, Oxford, with excellent scholars;" and in the Latin plays acted before Queen Elizabeth and James I. at Oxford, the pupils of Mulcaster carried the palm. Fuller tells us that Mulcaster was a severe teacher, but much beloved by his pupils. After being connected for some time with St Paul's School, he was promoted to the rectory of Stanford-Rivers in Essex, where he died in 1611. Many of his panegyrics in Latin verse were prefixed to the works of his contemporaries. His works are,—Positions, wherein those Primitive Circumstances be examined which are necessary for the training up of Children, either for Skill in their Book, or Health in their Bodice, London, 1581, 4to, which did carry him on to promise, and bind him to perform, The first Part of the Elementaries which entreateth chiefly of the Right Writing of our English Tongue, London, 1582, 4to, a work of which Warton speaks highly; also a Catechismus Paulinus in usum Scholae Paulinae conscriptus, London, 1601, written in long and
short verse, and once very popular. (Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. iii., p. 282, 1840; and Wilson's History of Merchant Tailors' School, vol. i.)