I think the system was called Lancastrian.
One very noticeable trait in the parson-schoolmasters of those old days (and perhaps it still survives) was the subserviency to rank and wealth towards any pupils likely to give them livings, whereof more anon; at present, an appropriate instance occurs to me.

I was in my thirteenth year monitor of the playground, when one Dillon, a scion of a titled family, hunted and killed a stray dog there, and much to their credit for humanity a number of other boys hunted and pelted _him_ into a dry ditch or vallum, dug for the leaping-pole under a Captain Clias who taught us athletics.

I was technically responsible for this open insult offered to Hibernian nobility, however well disposed to look another way and let lynch-law take its course.

Accordingly, the Doctor had me up for punishment, and he inflicted an almost impossible imposition, Book Epsilon of the Iliad (the longest of all) to be translated word for word, English and Greek, and to be given to him in MS.

within a month (it would have been work for a year), that or expulsion.