Richard Mulcaster

Richard Mulcaster (about 1531 to 1611) was an English schoolmaster, priest and writer on education, born at Carlisle in Cumberland. He was the first headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School in London from 1561, where he worked to set a rigorous curriculum in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and he later headed St Paul's School. His two treatises, Positions (1581) and Elementarie (1582), set out his views on training children in learning and in health of body, and Elementarie argued that English deserved the respect then given to Latin. The same book ends with a list of 8000 hard words that has led some to call him a founder of English lexicography, and Positions contains an early discussion of football's educational value.