It’s a rite of passage: parents taking their children to tour potential schools. But recently, Prince William and Princess Kate set tongues wagging when they were reportedly spotted visiting Eton College with their ten-year-old son, Prince George.
There is also speculation that the Prince and Princess of Wales’s 2022 move to Adelaide Cottage, which is on the grounds of Windsor Castle, was done to be closer to George if he does attend Eton, the famed boarding school for boys 13–18 years old.
The second heir to the throne would be in good company (both his father and uncle, Prince Harry, are alumni). The storied institution, with an enrollment of around 1,350 students, costs upward of $58,000 a year for paying pupils. For centuries, it has long been known as the “the nursery of the wellborn and wealthy.” Situated near Windsor in Berkshire, the 400-acre campus has enjoyed a royal seal of approval since its founding by King Henry VI in 1440.
“The finest school in the world for boys, Eton was meant to be a shock, I think,” Harry writes in his memoir Spare. “Shock must’ve been part of its original charter, even perhaps a part of the instructions given to its first architects by the school’s founder, my ancestor Henry VI. He deemed Eton some sort of holy shrine, a sacred temple, and to that end he wanted it to overwhelm the senses, so visitors would feel like meek, abased pilgrims. In my case, mission accomplished.”
Because of its noble origins, Eton has drawn international royals for over a century. Royal “old Etonians” include Prince Tokugawa Iesato of Japan, King Rama VII of Siam, Leopold III of Belgium, Aga Khan III, Prince Nicholas of Romania, and the notorious Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal, who in 2001, massacred his father, King Birendra, and mother, Queen Aishwarya, along with his siblings and other family members before turning the gun on himself.
According to Robert Lacey’s Battle of Brothers, a preteen Queen Elizabeth II walked to Eton from Windsor Castle to study history with Sir Henry Marten, the eccentric vice provost of Eton, who would nibble on sugar lumps meant for his pet raven.
Famous writers including Ian Fleming, George Orwell, Horace Walpole, and Aldous Huxley are all alumni. Most impressively, 20 British prime ministers have attended Eton, including Robert Walpole, William Gladstone, David Cameron, and Boris Johnson. According to Lacey, celebrated military hero and eventual prime minister Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, once “said that he had triumphed at the Battle of Waterloo thanks to all his games of cricket on the playing fields of Eton.”
According to 1899’s A History of Eton College, by Lionel Cust, the tragic and weak King Henry VI was an unlikely founder of such a grand institution. The son of the lauded warrior King Henry V, he was mentally ill, troubled, and plagued throughout his reign by warring factions who successfully deposed him. But he was deeply intellectual and steeped in medieval learning. “In Windsor castle, he was accustomed to associate with the youthful heirs of the nobility, so much so that Windsor became known even in those days as an ‘academy for the young nobility,’” Cust writes.
In 1440, Eton was founded by the king in conjunction with King’s College, Cambridge. According to Cust, “Henry VI gave a large amount of land, rights and other benefits, including the right to swans on the Thames.”
Named “King’s College of Our Lady of Eton beside Windsor,” the school was founded as a rigorous academic institution for “poor and indigent scholars,” known as the “King’s Scholars” (there are still around 70 King’s Scholars at Eton today). But the sons of noblemen were also allowed to board, and over time the school would be overtaken by aristocrats and gentry. This included a large number of what Cust calls “the wastrels of the aristocracy,” the younger sons who would not inherit titles or property.
According to Cust, by the 1600s Eton was “very much thronged with young nobility.”
The scholars endured a punishing schedule of classical studies and frequent corporeal punishment in monastic surroundings. However, there was occasional time for levity. In the 15th century, Nicholas West, the future Dean of St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, recalled pranks that included setting the provost’s lodge on fire and stealing silver spoons. One of the first English post-medieval comedic plays, Ralph Roister Doister, from the 16th century, was written by a schoolmaster at Eton.
Eton continued to be closely tied to the British monarchy. King Henry VIII visited soon after his accession, and his daughter Queen Elizabeth visited and was frequently entertained by Eton’s students. King George III was such a fan that the school still celebrates his birthday with the Fourth of June holiday (it’s not held on June 4 but after the end-of-May bank holiday), which includes boat processions, speeches, and cricket.
Eton could be a harsh place for boys who didn’t fit in. During his enrollment in the early 1800s, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was the target of constant bullying. “Shelley-baiting was an enjoyable and well-recognized pastime,” The Chronicle reportedly recounted in 1968, “and lurid accounts are handed down to us of his being pursued screaming round the Cloisters by hordes of bloodthirsty Collegers.”
However, Eton seems to remain a magical place for its alumni, even Shelley himself. According to Cust, shortly before his death, Shelley warmly reminisced about his time at school, hankering for the brown bread and butter students used to get on the trips into town, and recalling a beautiful girl they would often see.
Though Shelley is not known to have ever written a poem dedicated to Eton, the 18th-century poet Thomas Gray immortalized the school in “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.”
Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade,
Ah, fields belov'd in vain,
Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
As the non-noble middle and upper classes rose in England during the 19th century, getting your son into Eton meant ascendancy in the rigidly class-conscious society. According to Cust, the famous actor Charles Kean’s entrance into Eton was due to his father’s unexpected windfall. “When his father, Edmund Kean, made his great success as ‘Shylock’ at Drury Lane, he hurried home to his wife,” Cust writes, “and said ‘Mary you shall ride in your carriage, and you, Charley, shall be an Eton boy.’”
While Eton was becoming slightly more democratic, members of the British royal family were also beginning to send their sons to school instead of educating them at home. Eton, of course, was the most fitting place, despite occasional scandals along the way. In 1928, American actress Tallulah Bankhead caused a national scandal when it was claimed that she seduced multiple Eton students, spiriting them away under a rug in her car to the nearby Hotel de Paris. The report so troubled officials that the government sent a representative to discover the truth of the rumors. Unsurprisingly, Eton was uncooperative.
These wild rumors did nothing to stop the flow of minor royal family members and aristocrats to Eton. Queen Elizabeth II’s cousins Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and Prince Michael of Kent all attended Eton, as did Princess Diana’s father, John, 8th Earl Spencer, and her brother, Charles Spencer. Princess Diana’s familial links to Eton were part of the reason 13-year-old Prince William became the first senior royal to enroll there in 1995.
Eton became a haven for Prince William in the midst of his parents’ public feuds, which reportedly left him deeply embarrassed. Unlike other royals, he was a diligent, clever student and took his studies seriously. He also forged a close bond with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, walking to Windsor on Sundays for tea, where the royal grandparents lavished support on the young man.
His classmate, the actor Eddie Redmayne (who joins Hugh Laurie, Dominic West, Damian Lewis, and Tom Hiddleston as notable thespian alumni) recalled that Prince William was occasionally singled out because of who he was. “I did play rugby with Prince William,” he said “I always felt a bit sorry for him, because basically any school you played, all they wanted to do was tackle Prince William and they could say, ‘I tackled Prince William.’ So if you were standing next to Prince William, like I was, it was actually quite easy and quite fun.”
Despite occasionally being a target of jealous schoolmates, Prince William was friendly and popular, as he was the captain of the swimming team and his house football squad. He embraced Eton’s odd traditions and quirks, and according to biographer Penny Junor, was elected to a prestigious prefect society known as “Pop.” These select students were elected by their classmates and received numerous privileges, including the right to wear colorful waistcoats.
“William was very integrated,” one former classmate told The Cut. “William was a Pop so he was like a homecoming-king type.”
However, according to this same classmate, Eton was not such an easy fit for Prince Harry. “I think Harry probably had it harder finding his way.” Reportedly, before Diana died, she and Charles agonized over what to do with their academically struggling son.
“The Prince of Wales came to feel that Eton was simply beyond the intellectual reach of Harry and for a time Diana had agreed, prompting the two parents to research a series of alternatives – posh schools for thickos,” Lacey writes. “But William protested. He insisted that his brother would be happiest joining him at Eton – that’s what Harry had told him he really wanted to do, and that’s what William wanted too.”
According to Junor, Diana was also worried about the stigma that her son would face if he did not follow his brother. “If he doesn’t go there,” she said, “everyone will think he’s stupid.”
Tragically, Diana would not live to see Harry go to Eton. Mired in grief over his mother’s death, Prince Harry entered Eton in 1998. He was placed in Manor House (one of 25 houses students are lodged in) with Prince William. The house was overseen by the fatherly, funny Dr. Andrew Gailey, who attempted to guide the bereaved boys as much as he could.
In Spare, Prince Harry claims that William told him explicitly to pretend they didn’t know one another at Eton, the school was his sanctuary, and he wanted to keep it that way. Adrift and in mourning, Harry was also seemingly over his head academically. Since Eton, Harry writes in his memoir, was “heaven for brilliant boys, it could thus only be purgatory for one very unbrilliant boy.”
In some of the funniest parts of Spare, Harry mocks the formal school uniform. “Every Etonian was required to wear a black tailcoat, white collarless shirt, white stiff collar pinned to the shirt with a stud—plus pinstripe trousers, heavy black shoes, and a tie…Formal kit, they called it, but it wasn’t formal, it was funereal,” he writes. “And there was a reason. We were supposed to be in perpetual mourning for old Henry VI. Or else for King George, an early supporter of the school, who used to have the boys over to the castle for tea—or something like that.”
He also details the strange, cultish language used at the ancient school. “Classes were no longer classes: they were divs,” he writes. “Teachers were no longer teachers: they were beaks. Cigarettes were tabbage. (Seemingly everyone had a raging tabbage habit.) … Sporty boys were separated into two groups: dry bobs and wet bobs. Dry bobs played cricket, football, rugby, or polo. Wet bobs rowed, sailed, or swam. I was a dry who occasionally got wet.”
Prince William might have had a reason to be annoyed with Harry, who constantly tried to get his attention. “He made William jump by leaping out from behind a tree during a cross-country race and shouting, ‘Can I have your autograph?’” Angela Levin writes in Harry: A Biography of a Prince. “William lost his concentration and as a result his chance of being among the winners.”
During Prince Harry’s time at Eton, he experimented with marijuana, earning the nickname “Hash Harry.” His poor grades were cruelly mocked in headlines, leading to questions about why he and other ultra-wealthy, underperforming students were allowed into prestigious schools in the first place. But the nail in the coffin came when Prince Harry was accused of cheating by a former teacher. An exam board cleared Harry and he has denied the charges.
Over the last two decades, criticism of Eton’s elitist attitude, lack of diversity, and role as a patriarchal pipeline to the ruling classes has grown. As Matthew Holehouse wrote in The Telegraph, “Eton boys are taught they were born to rule. It’s a shame so many are not.” Just last year, Eton apologized after girls from a visiting state school were reportedly subjected to racial slurs and misogynistic catcalls. But Eton has made attempts to catch up to the present day, according to a 2006 graduate:
Historically, if you were from the right family, whatever that means, you could kind of walk in there even if your kids were dumb as shit. They’ve changed that now massively. Although when I was there, there still was a bit of the ‘Oh, I’m the whatevereth generation in my family who’s been here.’
According to Eton’s website, almost 20% of their student body receives at least some fee reduction. But the wealthy generational elite also continues to matriculate to Eton at a steady clip. Princess Margaret’s grandchildren Charles Armstrong-Jones, Samuel Chatto, and Arthur Chatto all graduated from Eton in the years after William and Harry. And if Prince George does indeed attend the school, Eton will have yet another royal feather in its illustrious cap. “As an Etonian prime minister has said,” Cust writes, “every day at Eton is forming a great man, and furnishing material for the future history of the country.”
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