SCHOOLS 



1559/ and he was still receiving the payment ten years later.' In 1582' 

 the school received a fresh endowment from Owen Ragsdale, who 

 founded an almshouse called the Jesus Hospital there, let in 18 18 for 

 ^9 14J. a year. In 1617 Robert Raphson, schoolmaster of Rothwell, 

 received still the old stipend. The school was confirmed by a decree of 

 commissioners of charitable uses in 1685, in the possession of St. Mary's 

 Chapel, which had perhaps always been the schoolroom. But in 18 18 

 it had sunk into an elementary school, and the grammar school master's 

 stipend is still applied to elementary education. 



MAGDALEN COLLEGE SCHOOL, BRACKLEY 



Brackley School began as a hospital dedicated to St. John the 

 Evangelist,* founded about 1160 by Robert ' le Bossu,' or humpback, 

 the second of four Roberts earls of Leicester. The patronage came 

 eventually to the Lovel family, ' the masters of the Hospital being 

 practically private chaplains.' In 1484 Francis, Lord Lovel, sold it to 

 William Waynflete to become part of the endowment of Magdalen 

 College, Oxford, the college being bound to maintain there a chantry 

 priest to pray for the soul of Lord Lovel and his ancestors. 



The chantry was duly kept up by the college until the Act for the 

 abolition of chantries. The chantry commissioners of Edward VI 

 reported at Brackley ^ : — 



Saint James' Stipendarye preest, graunted by Laurence Stubbs, President of the Col- 

 lege of Sainte Marye Magdaleyne in Oxford and the Fellows of the same College to 

 have a prest to sing within the parishe churche there for tearme of 40 years, as may 

 appere by the graunt thereof, bering date 8 Dec. 19 ' Henrici Octavi.' 



The report then set out the grant to Robert Barnard, M.A., for- 

 merly fellow, of ' a certain chapelry or chantry or priests' service in the 

 church of SS. John and James to celebrate masses and other divine 

 service for the soul of Lord Francis of Lovell, the souls of his ances- 

 tors and benefactors and all Christian souls.' The grant was for forty 

 years. The stipend was ^^8 a year. It included a chamber on the 

 south side of the church with a garden. Appended to the report is a 

 memorandum : — 



Sythe the commysion to us directed, Roberta Barnarde, clerk, who by virtue of 

 this grant aforesaid to him made for term of years did there serve, is deceased ; since 

 which time the President and Fellows of the College aforesaid have erected a Free 

 School there, in which many children are taught, to the great commodity of the whole 

 country. 



The first schoolmaster thus appointed by the college was a man of 

 some note, Thomas Godwin,* afterwards dean of Christ Church, Oxford, 



' P.R.O. Exch. Mins'. Accts. 1-2 Eliz. No. 57. 



' Ibid. 9-10 Eliz. No. 56. Note also P.R.O. Exch. Spec. Com. 12 Eliz. 



' CarRsle, ii, 206 ; C.C.R. xxiv, 185. 



' tiorthamptonshire 'Notes and ^eries (1890), iii, 49. The information given in that article was 

 tnainly derived from information furnished by the original deeds at M.igdalen College. 



' English Schools at the Reformation, pt. ii, p. 150, from Chantry Certificate No. 35. 



^ Repsur of Magdalen College, Oxford, by W. D. Macray, ii, 86-7. 



231 



