Edward Thring on Education Edward Thring (1821-1887), who founded the Headmasters' Conference of prominent schools in Britain in 1869, was the best-known headmaster of his generation. Formed by a nature-loving childhood in rural Somerset, survival in the notorious Long Chamber at Eton, a fellowship at King's College Cambridge and a harrowing curacy in the slums of Gloucester, he developed the conviction that education was God's...