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Merchant Taylors' School (MTS) is a British independent day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has been located on 250 acres (1 km2) of grounds at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire (but within the HA postcode area).
The school was founded in 1551 by members of the Merchant Taylors' Company - Sir Thomas White, Sir Richard Hilles, Emanuel Lucar and Stephen Hales.
It was originally located in a manor house called the Manor of the Rose, in the parish of St. Lawrence Pountney in the City of London, where it remained until 1875.
Today the school caters for 872 students between the ages of 11 and 18.
Old Merchant Taylors (OMTs)
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- Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester and translator of the King James Bible
- Riz Ahmed - actor, comedian and musician
- Neil Lawson Baker - artist, sculptor and photographer
- Bryan Balkwill - conductor
- William Barber - scholar who edited the first complete collection of Voltaire's writings; also a schoolmaster
- John Beames - ICS, Author of "Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian"
- Professor Martin Biddle - archaeologist; his work was important in the development of medieval and post-medieval archaeology in Great Britain
- Peter Broadbent - Bishop of Willesden
- Nigel Calder - populariser of science
- EH Carr, Marxist historian and philosopher of history
- Lynn Chadwick - sculptor, his work 'The Beast' adorns the school grounds
- Bob Chilcott - composer
- Robert, Lord Clive (expelled) (Clive of India)
- Donald Coggan - Archbishop of Canterbury, 1974–80
- Ronald Cove-Smith - surgeon and rugby union international, captaining both England and the British Lions
- Sir David Dain - High Commissioner to Pakistan to 2000
- Warwick Deeping - novelist
- Dixon Denham - African explorer, Governor of Sierra Leone
- Thomas Dove Bishop of Peterborough 1601–1630
- Alan Duncan, MP and Minister of State in the Department for International Development
- Iorwerth Edwards, Egyptologist
- Richard Elsey - Convicted murderer
- Admiral Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans - naval officer and explorer, member of Scott's Terra Nova Expedition (expelled)
- Sir Vincent Evans, GCMG, MBE, QC - judge, a decade at the European Court of Human Rights
- Herbert Fryer, noted pianist and pedagogue
- Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, MLC - military officer, head of the New South Wales Customs Service 1834-1859, Crown appointed Member of the New South Wales Legislative Council
- The Rt. Hon. John Gilbert, Baron Gilbert - life peer
- Ronald Gurner MC - headmaster and writer
- The Rt. Hon. The Lord Hailey, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE (William Malcolm Hailey) - Chairman of the Committee on Post-War problems in the Colonies, Governor of the Punjab and later the United Provinces
- Henry R.H. Hall - Egyptologist and historian
- Jack Hargreaves - Television presenter & executive
- Gordon Harris (born 1964) - Cricketer[
- Sir Brian Harrison - Professor of Modern History, Oxford University
- Air Vice Marshall Michael Harwood - Head of British Defence Staff/ Defence Attaché Washington (2008-)
- Mehdi Hasan - Political Editor of UK version of The Huffington Post
- Robert Herrick (1591–1674) lyric poet, author of "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may..."
- Sir Arthur Hockaday, KCB, CMG - Ministry of Defence civil servant; Secretary and Director General, Commonwealth War Graves Commission
- Fred Huskisson, MBE, MC and Bar - England rugby player and Second World War soldier
- Conn Iggulden - author, mainly historical fiction
- Sir James Jeans, Astronomer Royal, 'new physicist', 'Quantum theorist', after whom there is a major 13+ Scholarship
- William Joynson-Hicks, 1st Viscount Brentford - Home Secretary 1924-1929
- William Juxon - Archbishop of Canterbury; he attended Charles I on the scaffold in 1649
- Boris Karloff, actor
- H. R. F. Keating[ - Literary critic and author of Inspector Ghote mysteries
- Matt Kirshen - Comedian
- Thomas Kyd - Renaissance dramatist, author of The Spanish Tragedie
- David P Leitch - Journalist and Author
- Michael Majerus (1954–2009) geneticist, entomologist, Professor of Evolution at the University of Cambridge
- Alfred Marshall - economist, one of the founders of neoclassical economics, creator of the Cambridge Economics Tripos
- Morris Martin - Classical scholar who devoted much of his life to the Moral Re-armament movement
- Reginald Maudling - politician
- Michael McIntyre - comedian
- Rev. Michael Anthony Moxon - Chaplain to the Queen (1986–1998)
- Mick Mulligan - 1950s traditional jazz trumpeter and bandleader
- Gilbert Murray - classicist, after whom there is a major 13+ Scholarship N-Z
- Sir Thomas Nott - Royalist army officer
- Rt Revd Mark Nye Suffragan Bishop of Pretoria
- Titus Oates - (1665–1666, expelled)
- Bernard Pagel, FRS - astronomer
- Samuel Palmer - landscape painter
- John Perrin, churchman and academic, one of the translators of the Authorised King James Version of the Bible
- Michael Peschardt - BBC foreign correspondent
- Walter Alison Phillips - historian
- John Raphael, rugby union player and cricketer, captained the 1910 British Lions tour to Argentina
- John Randall, Conservative MP for Uxbridge and formerly Deputy Chief Whip
- Joe Ray, one half of Dubstep and Drum 'n' Bass duo Nero (band)
- Sir Martin Reid (Harold Martin Smith Reid), KBE, CMG - diplomat
- Sir David Richmond, KBE CMG - Director General, Defence and Intelligence, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
- Rev'd Dr Cormac Rigby - BBC Radio 3 broadcaster and Roman Catholic priest
- Andrew Robathan - Conservative MP, Minister of State for Northern Ireland, ex Coldstream Guards Officer, SAS
- Martin Rowson - political cartoonist
- Arthur Lindsay Sadler - Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney.
- Andrew Cunningham Scott, Emeritus Professor of Geology, Royal Holloway University of London
- Pat Sharp - radio & TV broadcaster
- Rt. Rev'd Peter Selby - Bishop of Worcester
- James Shirley, poet and playwright
- Sir John Silvester - Recorder of London 1803-1822
- Sir Robert Smith, 3rd Baronet - MP for West Aberdeenshire (Liberal Democrat)
- Edmund Spenser - Renaissance poet, author of The Faerie Queene
- Sir Jock Stirrup, Chief of the Defence Staff
- Sir John Sulston, Nobel Laureate (2002)
- Paul Sussman - author, archaeologist and journalist
- John Tahourdin - Ambassador to Bolivia
- Major W. Ian Thomas (Ian), DSO, TD - Royal Fusilier and preacher
- Rt Rev. Samuel Thorton, DD - Anglican bishop of Ballarat, Australia
- John Timpson,OBE - radio presenter, former presenter of the "Today" programme and "Any Questions"
- James Townley - dramatist and anonymous playwright (1714–1778)
- James Twining - author
- William Wadd, early 19th century surgeon and medical author
- John Walter, founder of The Times newspaper
- William Walter - chartered accountant, brogue aficionado and representative of the English upper middle class in Edinburgh, Scotland
- Augustine Warner - Virginia landowner, common ancestor of George Washington and Elizabeth II
- John Webster, Renaissance dramatist, author of The Duchess of Malfi and The White Devil
- Oliver White - Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire cricketer
- Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke - Civil War politician who enshrined the principle that only parliament could dissolve parliament
- John J. Wild - part of the first group to use ultrasound for body imaging, most notably for diagnosing cancer
Notable Members of the Company, Governors and Masters
- Richard Mulcaster - the school’s first Head Master, a visionary educationalist, thought by many to be the model for Shakespeare's Holofernes
- Baroness Butler-Sloss - first female Lord Justice of Appeal and, until 2004, was the highest-ranking female judge in the United Kingdom
- The Rt. Rev'd Spencer Leeson - Head Master, instigated move of the School from Charterhouse Square to the current Sandy Lodge site
- Alexander Macmillan, 2nd Earl of Stockton - First Upper Warden of the Merchant Taylors' Company
- Sir Geoffrey Holland, KCB, OMT - career civil servant who became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter from 1994 to 2002; Chairman of the Governors until 2011
- Michael Skinner - Chairman, Dege and Skinner
- Professor Douglas MacDowell - distinguished classical scholar
- The Rt. Rev'd Peter Walker - Bishop of Ely, familiar figure at Oxford and Cambridge; Master at Merchant Taylors'