Henry Drury (educator)

He was educated at both Harrow and Eton, and at King's College, Cambridge (matriculated 1797, B.A.

He was a master at Harrow for 41 years from 1801 to 1841 and was tutor there to Lord Byron to whom he later became a close friend and correspondent.

[3] Drury was considered the favourite candidate to succeed George Butler as headmaster of Harrow in 1829; Charles Longley, an Oxford academic and a last-minute external candidate, was instead appointed.

[4] Thereafter Drury's effectiveness as a schoolmaster declined: he became "increasingly eccentric, bad-tempered, and indolent", losing classroom control, missing morning lessons, wearing flowery dressing-gowns, eating fruit during lessons, and borrowing cigars from schoolboys.

Just two years after the marriage, Byron wrote to Francis Hodgson "Talking of marriage puts me in mind of Drury (who, I suppose, has a dozen children by this time, all fine, fretful brats); I will never forgive matrimony for having spoiled such an excellent bachelor".