Jeremy Collier (BGS staff 1641-1644)

The next two ushers (of Boston Grammar School), Theophilus Welfitt and Jeremy Collier, who arrived in 1640 and the following year, respectively, were fellow undergraduates when Laud was much disturbed by what he found at Cambridge. Among many other criticisms, the Archbishop noted that.

"Students do not wear clerical clothes, but new fashioned gowns of blue, green, red or mixed colours; they have fair roses upon their shoes, wear long frizzled hair upon their head, broad spread bands upon the shoulders and long Merchants' Ruffs about the neck, with fair feminine cuffs at ye wrist. Tutors allow their pupils to draw double supper money to spend in the town..."

Collier was at Boston during the height of the civil war, and at a time when his old university, a parliamentary stronghold, came under serious royalist threat, it being reported that "frightened by the Neighbourhood Noise of War, our students either quit their Gowns, or abandon their Studies". It was to Cambridge that he returned as a fellow of St John's College late in 1644, in the place of an expelled royalist sympathiser. Later he was dismissed as master of Ipswich School - but his son earned himself a place in the history books as the author of historical and moral works and as the country's leading "non-juror bishop".

From Boston, It's Story and People by Geo. S Bagley

J Collier Matriculated at Trinity (school or college) 1636. Gained BA at Cambridge 1639, MA at Cambridge 1643. He was elected usher at Boston Grammar School 1641 (19th March)

From Floreat Bostona by Geo. S Bagley