Bedford School is not to be confused with Bedford Girls' School, Bedford High School, Bedford Modern School, Old Bedford School in Bedford, Texas or Bedford Academy in Bedford, Nova Scotia. Bedford School is a public school (English fee-charging boarding and day school for boys) in the county town of Bedford in England. Founded in 1552, it is the oldest of four independent schools in Bedford run by the Harpur Trust. Bedford School is composed of the Preparatory School (ages 7 to 13) and the Upper School (ages 13 to 18). There are around 1,100 pupils, of whom approximately one half are boarders. In 2014, James Hodgson succeeded John Moule as headmaster after he moved on as headmaster of Radley College, another independent school for boys. The school has produced six Nobel Prize winner, five recipients of the Victoria Cross, twenty-four rugby internationals, the winners of eight Olympic gold medals, and a former England cricket captain, Alastair Cook. Bedford School was named Independent Boys’ School of the Year 2021 in the much-coveted annual Independent Schools of the Year Awards. History A school was established in Bedford as early as the thirteenth century, adjacent to St Paul's Church. The current Bedford School was established on 15 August 1552, when the Mayor, Bailiffs, Burgesses and Commonality of Bedford were, by letters patent issued by Edward VI, granted the right to establish a school which was to provide "education, institution and instruction of Boys and Youths in Grammar, Literature and Good Manners." The driving force behind the establishment of the school was John Williams, Mayor of Bedford three times between 1546 and 1552, and MP for Bedford between 1554 and 1555. Born in Bedford in c1519, Williams had purchased several hundred pounds of former monastic property in 1544-45 following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This included the old schoolhouse, and during Williams' first mayoralty, between 1546 and 1547, the Bedford church of St Peter Dunstable was demolished and the materials were utilised in carrying out repairs to the school. Shortly thereafter, William Harper (born in Bedford in c1496) and his wife, Alice, set out to provide funds for an educational endowment in perpetuity (later known as the Harpur Trust) for the "poore chylders ther to be nurryshed and informed". The endowment included buildings in Bedford and thirteen acres of land acquired by Harper in Holborn. And so, conveying this endowment to the corporation of