Charterhouse School
Charterhouse, originally The Hospital of King James and Thomas Sutton in Charterhouse, or more simply House, is an English collegiate independent boarding school (also referred to as a public school) situated at Godalming in Surrey.Founded by Thomas Sutton in London in 1611 on the site of the old Carthusian monastery in Charterhouse Square, Smithfield, it is one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868 which derived from the Clarendon Commission of 1864. Today pupils at Charterhouse are still referred to as Carthusians, and ex-pupils as Old Carthusians or OCs.HistoryIn May 1611 the London Charterhouse came into the hands of Thomas Sutton (1532–1611) of Snaith, Lincolnshire. He acquired a fortune by the discovery of coal on two estates which he had leased near Newcastle-on-Tyne, and afterwards, removing to London, he carried on a commercial career. In 1611, the year of his death, he endowed a hospital on the site of the Charterhouse, calling it the hospital of King James, and in his will he bequeathed moneys to maintain a chapel, hospital (almshouse) and school. He died on 12 December and subsequently the will was hotly contested but upheld in court, and the foundation was finally constituted to afford a home for eighty male pensioners (gentlemen by descent and in poverty, soldiers that have borne arms by sea or land, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or servants in household to the King or Queens Majesty), and to educate forty boys.
