The biennial Commemoration of Benefactors of Westminster saw a packed church give thanks to those who have given much to help the School flourish, both historically and to this day.

The service at the end of November, much of it in its traditional Latin, was an opportunity for the Westminster School and Westminster Under School communities to gather to remember the legacy of those whose generosity continues to serve pupils today, through the buildings in which we study, Green at Vincent Square, and bursaries which widen access to the School.

In his address, Head Master Dr Gary Savage talked about the world around us — its politics, its misinformation, its wars — and how Westminster’s ‘liberal’ education allows us to “seek to teach and to learn without dogma, prejudice or impediment; and to deploy that learning — that pedagogy — to shape our environment according to those same values of open-mindedness and respect rooted in intellectual honesty and rigour. My hope is that, thus equipped, our pupils can go into the world as the next generation of leaders in their chosen fields – and to do some good in it, for all our sakes.”

He discussed the work of both schools right now, to prepare themselves for full co-education and expansion, and the human and financial resource needed for the ambitious plans — being carried out against the headwinds of VAT on fees – “a tax on the provision of education which as a charity we have objected to in public and in private.”

“At times like these”, he continued, “the importance of supporters and benefactors has never been greater; and so I pay renewed tribute to all those who have helped the School in the past, and hope there will be many more in the future willing to take up the mantle and thus to be commemorated in turn. Without this assistance, Westminster would not be the world-class school it is today, able to navigate particular political, economic and cultural turbulence without losing sight of the immutable point of the place: to promote the wellbeing of all the children in our care, and the critical importance of honesty, accuracy, generosity and truth in our learning, and in our lives.”

Commemoration of Benefactors of Westminster School
‘Big Commem’

“Learning shall be pursued with sincerity,
that the youth which is growing to adulthood,
as tender shoots in the wood of our state,
shall be liberally instructed in good books
to the greater honour of the state.”
~ From the statutes of the Collegiate Church of St Peter, Westminster, granted by Elizabeth I in 1560 

From soon after her death, the School commemorated the re-founding of the College of St Peter at Westminster by Queen Elizabeth I by granting a Play each year on the anniversary of her accession, 17 November. It was in the late nineteenth century that a more formal annual tribute began to be paid to Elizabeth and all subsequent benefactors of the foundation, in a service of Commemoration.

The Commendatio was, from the start, a Latin service; under the terms of the 1662 Act of Uniformity, the School was allowed the exceptional privilege of services and prayers in Latin, a right still exercised on a weekly basis.

Three types of Latin pronunciation are heard at Westminster. Classical Latin is the Latin that we might have heard from Cicero, and is used in the modern classroom. Italianate ecclesiastical Latin is that used by choirs in the majority of Church services. Our own ‘Westminster’ Latin is unique now to the School, a relic of the early-modern style, in which vowels are pronounced following their English sound, rather than in the accepted classical manner. This is the Latin of an educated Elizabethan, articulating the words with an English inflection in a colloquial fluency, and is the form of pronunciation that we use when we sing Latin Prayers up School every Wednesday, as well as in our usage of many Latin tags such as a prioni, or anno domini. As a rough guide, pronounce Westminster Latin as if it were English, with long vowels: ‘a’ as in ‘play’, for example, and ‘Aymen’ at the end of the prayers in Latin.

John Evelyn wrote, in 1661, that he heard the Westminster Scholars’ “odd pronouncing of Latine, so that out of England no nation were able to understand or endure it”, yet it has, for all educated at the School, a logic, a power, a resilience and a charm.

In our Commemoration of Benefactors service, adapted from the nineteenth century order for Commemoration, the congregation sings and offers responses in Westminster Latin, as generations of Westminsters before us.