A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



of the abbey this was no monastic endow- 

 ment, but 'by the foundation of Mary Pakenham 

 by her last will ' out of property in Pakenham 

 given by her. £6 a year a piece for 4 university 

 exhibitioners was for those times a rich exhibi- 

 tion, but the monks did not find the money — 

 they were merely trustees of it. They did, of 

 course, contribute young monks as scholars to 

 the university, sending them at Oxford to the 

 joint college of the southern Benedictine monas- 

 teries, Gloucester Hall, founded about 1298, and 

 at Cambridge to a hall, the purchase of which, 

 about 1433, by the abbot of Glastonbury on 

 behalf of the Benedictine order in general, is 

 recorded in a Bury register. But there were 

 only 2 or 3 monks at a time at the university, 

 and the obligation to give even this number a 

 good education was due to papal statute as late as 



1335- 



Bury being exempt from episcopal visitation, 

 we have no information how far the obligation 

 to teach the novices and junior monks grammar 

 and to send some at least to the higher faculties 

 at the universities was observed there. But in 

 the latter fifteenth and in the sixteenth century 

 the reports of visitations by the bishop of Norwich 

 of those monasteries which were not exempt have 

 been preserved and printed. 1 The episcopal 

 visitors at Butley Priory in 1492-5, where were 

 a prior and 13 brethren, found that the brethren 

 ' had no preceptor to teach them grammar,' and 

 in 1 5 14 it required the special interposition of 

 the bishop to make them send to Oxford 

 Brother Thomas Orford, who was ' a good 

 grammarian and given to learning,' though 

 friends were willing to maintain him at the 

 university. John Thetford, another brother, 

 was however studying canon law (in dicretis) at 

 Oxford. In 1526 they had again to be directly 

 ordered to keep a scholar in the university • at 

 the expense of this house.' In 1532 they were 

 told to provide a master ' to teach the novices 

 and boys,' i.e. the almonry boys — 'singing as 

 far as prick-song (priksong) and grammar, and 

 also to maintain a canon in the bosom of the 

 University.' At St. Peter's, Ipswich, where 

 VVolsey shortly afterwards planted his learned 

 secular canons and grammar school, in 1 5 1 4, 

 they ' have no schoolmaster ' and the prior was 

 ordered, not to provide a grammar school for the 

 public (the public, as will be seen, already did 

 that for themselves), but to ' have the brethren 

 taught grammar.' This injunction had to be 

 repeated in 1526. ' Let there be an injunction 

 to provide a teacher to teach the novices.' 



At Eye Priory in 1514, there was apparently 

 a master but ' the juniors are negligent in 

 attending school (in exercendh sco/is).' Eye 

 Priory, however, maintained and clothed 4 poor 

 boys, by ancient custom. 



1 Norwich Visit, (ed. Dr. Jessopp), Camd. Soc. 

 (New Ser.), n. 39. 



While the monasteries did nothing for general 

 education, wherever we find a collegiate church, 

 even in later creations, where a public gram- 

 mar school was not expressly part of the 

 original foundation, we find a public grammar 

 school springing up. So at Mcttingham, which 

 maintained a small boarding school of 14 boys, 

 Stoke-by-Clarc, Sudbury, and Wingfield, all bore 

 their part in education. The other grammar 

 schools which appear in the pre-Edwardian days 

 were in connexion with chantries or stipendiary 

 priests or gilds. 



It is difficult to make out whether there was 

 any real increase in the number of schools in 

 Tudor days, as in most of the schools there 

 seems to be some evidence or suspicion of 

 existence prior to the Chantries Act, and of the 

 Elizabethan foundation being a revival or new 

 endowment rather than creation de novo. Cer- 

 tain it is that there were hardly any new foun- 

 dations after the reign of Elizabeth. 



Most of these grammar schools seem to have 

 flourished, and held their heads high, contributing 

 even more largely to the universities in propor- 

 tion to their numbers than the great public 

 schools. Like them they catered for the country 

 gentry, the clergy and yeomen of their neigh- 

 bourhood, and went up or down in size and fame as 

 the reputation of some particular master brought 

 one or other into special prominence and 

 attracted boarders from distant parts of Suffolk 

 or from the neighbouring counties. But in the 

 latter part of the eighteenth century a blight 

 came over many of them, especially those which 

 failed to provide buildings more suited to the 

 times, or fell into the hands of masters, who 

 either had livings at the same time and neglected 

 their schools, or remained at their posts after 

 they were too old. When first stage-coaches 

 and then railways annihilated distance, these 

 unfortunates languished on as third-grade gram- 

 mar schools, or were degraded into elementary 

 schools. Bury alone seems to have preserved a 

 persistently high standard, and even as late as 

 1848 to have ranked among the greater public 

 schools. 



The decay of Suffolk as an industrial centre 

 and its almost exclusively agrarian character, with 

 the consequent falling-ofF in population no doubt 

 affected these schools. This falling-ofF prob- 

 ably accounts for the exceptionally scanty 

 number of endowed elementary schools founded 

 in the county up to 1750, which is in marked 

 contrast with the large number of its early 

 grammar schools. Whether in these days, when 

 parents seek to plant their boys at schools away 

 from towns, a more brilliant future is not in 

 store for Suffolk schools, time and the county 

 council alone can tell. Certain it is that with- 

 out good buildings, excellent equipment, ample 

 recreation grounds, and well paid assistant masters, 

 no secondary school in these days can become or 

 remain a centre of light and leading. 



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