and during the Protectorate the
boys were ardent partisans of the king, whose scholars they said they
were and would always remain. "It will never be well with the nation
until Westminster School is suppressed," said the Puritan Dean of Christ
Church, John Owen.

However, the "King's School" remained vehemently loyal in spite of all
the efforts of the Presbyterian and Independent preachers in the Abbey;
and it was not suppressed.

In Queen Anne's reign the School buildings took their present form. The
old Dormitory, which had been in the Middle Ages the Granary of the
Convent, stood on the west side of Dean's Yard.

"The wear-and-tear of four centuries, which included the
rough usage of many generations of schoolboys, had rendered
this venerable building quite unfit for its purposes. The
gaping roof and broken windows, which freely admitted the
rain and snow, wind and sun; the beams, cracked and hung
with cobwebs; the cavernous walls, with many a gash
inflicted by youthful Dukes and Earls in their boyish days;
the chairs, scorched by many a fire, and engraven deep with
many a famous name--provoked alternately the affection and
derision of Westminster students."[120]

So the Dormitory was doomed, and was re-built by Lord Burlington after
designs by Sir Christopher Wren, in the College Garden--a lovely space
of cool green beyond the Little Cloisters--where it stands to this day.

The school of Westminster has been always intimately connected with the
Abbey Church, since the days when the abbot sat on one side of the Great
Cloisters with his monks, and the master of the novices on the other
with his disciples. And quaint customs still survive from early days in
which the Chapter and the Scholars take part more or less.

Across the Great School runs the famous Bar, over which it is the duty
of the college cook to toss a pancake on Shrove Tuesday "to be scrambled
for by the boys and presented to the Dean." Once a year the Dean and
Chapter "receive in the Hall the former Westminster Scholars, and hear
the recitation of the Epigrams, which have contributed for so many years
their lively comments on the events of each passing generation,"[121] a
relic of the old custom by which the Dean and Prebendaries dined in the
College Hall--the ancient Refectory--with all the School. Every Sunday
and Saint's day during the school year, the Westminster Scholars troop
into the Choir in their w