SCHOOLS 



NORTHAMPTONSHIRE, like other counties, can boast not a 

 few schools of ancient date and great renown, though none 

 which can prove or reasonably assert a pre-Conquest or even 

 pre-Plantagenet origin. Peterborough, as Medehampstede 

 or Burgh, was famous in early English times, but as an abbey, not 

 as a town. Northampton, the county town, was but an insignificant 

 place in old English days, and was almost a creation of the Conqueror. 

 But the fertile valley of the navigable Nen was crowded with well-to-do 

 towns, as evidenced by the number and size of the churches, and in 

 almost every one of them there seems to have been a grammar school. 



As the case stands at present the schools which can show a pre- 

 Reformation existence, before the dissolution of the monasteries under 

 Henry VIII, or before the dissolution under Edward VI of the colleges 

 and chantries which were the main provision for schools, are those of 

 Northampton in the reign of Henry II, Higham Ferrers, which existed 

 in the time of Richard II, Towcester, founded in the reign of Henry VI, 

 Fotheringhay and Oundle under Edward IV, Blisworth in the reign of 

 Henry VII, and Peterborough, where the school is mentioned at the be- 

 ginning of the reign of Henry VIII. Kettering School was in Charles II's 

 time found to have existed from time immemorial. Brackley was 

 converted from a chantry into a school by Magdalen College, Oxford, in 

 1548, when dissolution was actually impending, and so escaped destruc- 

 tion. Wellingborough, although in all probability maintained by the 

 gild before, can only be found actually to have enjoyed the endowment 

 of the gild after the Dissolution ; while at Daventry, though the origin 

 of the school may be suspected to be found in the Trinity Brotherhood, 

 no connexion with it can be shown. Besides the endowed grammar 

 schools, which provided for secondary education, there were many 

 elementary schools, a good number no doubt unendowed, but some 

 endowed ; most of them song schools, which also almost invariably and 

 necessarily taught reading and generally the accidence or inflexions of 

 Latin grammar ; some specifically reading schools. Thus at North- 

 ampton the organist of the gild of early fourteenth-century foundation 

 taught a song school ; at Barnack, i 359, the rector had licence to found 

 a reading, song, and grammar school ; at Farthinghoe and Finedon or 

 Thingden petty schools were founded under Henry VI; at Aldwinkle 

 a school for spelling and reading under Henry VII, and at Fawsley a 

 song school under Henry VIII ; while at Spratton there was also an 

 endowed school, probably elementary, existing under Henry VIII. 



The number of small grammar schools founded or endowed in the 

 seventeenth century is amazing. They attempted to be both elementary 

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