A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



NORTHAMPTON GRAMMAR SCHOOL 



As mentioned above, the earliest piece of evidence of a school at 

 Northampton is an entry in the Pipe Roll for 1176/ 'and in 6j-. the 

 livery of John, clerk of Alionara, queen of Spain, who is staying at 

 school at Northampton, for 3 weeks by the king's writ.' This means 

 that the king paid for the board and education of a boy in the train of 

 the queen of Spain while she was staying in England as his guest. 

 Livery had not then obtained the restricted meaning it afterwards 

 acquired of a livery of cloth or other stuff, but, as in the phrase 

 ' Lanfrancs livery ' ' at Canterbury, meant the whole keep of a person — 

 food, drink, clothes, and all other necessaries. The sum of 2s. a week 

 appears to indicate that the young clerk of the queen of Spain was a 

 youth of high rank, for when a century later, 7 March, 1 276,^ Archbishop 

 GifFard of York sent 3 boys to school at Beverley, 2s. a week was the 

 sum paid for the whole three, or only 8^. a week each, which was the 

 tariff per head for the commons of the scholars of Winchester another 

 century later. 



It may be argued by those who for some obscure reason are averse 

 to admitting this antiquity of the provision of secondary schools in 

 England that the school at Northampton was not a grammar school but 

 Northampton University. But this would be altogether too previous. 

 There are the merest scintilla of evidence of the existence even of 

 Oxford University before this time ; indeed the latest historian of the 

 universities wrongly attributes * its origin to a migration from Paris only 

 in 1 167. The fleeting university at Northampton was a thirteenth, 

 not a twelfth century development. At that time, indeed, Northampton 

 bid fair not only to become a third university town, but even to eclipse 

 both Oxford and Cambridge. 



In or about the year 1260 a 'town and gown row ' at Cambridge, 

 of the bloody kind then usual, led to an exodus of scholars to North- 

 ampton. In 1263 the Oxford schools were stopped, and emigrants from 

 the older university flowed thence also to Northampton. Next year the 

 Oxford scholars did yeoman service with their bows and arrows from 

 the walls of Northampton against the king, and narrowly escaped hanging 

 when the town was taken. After the battle of Lewes the scholars were 

 ordered to return to Oxford, and in 1265 a royal writ ordered the entire 

 cessation of the university of Northampton. 



It is impossible to suppose that a town which thus narrowly escaped 

 becoming a university town had no grammar school between the 

 twelfth and sixteenth centuries ; but in the absence of records alike 

 of the town and of the ecclesiastical foundations in and about it no 



' Pipe R. 22 Hen. II, rot. 4, m. I. ' Et in liberacione Johannis clerici A. Regine Hppanie qui 

 moratur in scolis apud Norhamton, de tribus septimanis, per breve Regis, vjs.' 



' r.C.H. Surrey, ii. Schools. 



' Yorkshire Arch. Society Record Series {Early Yorkshire Schools), ii, 80 m, from Reg. GifFard 1 20 {b). 



* Universities of Europe in the Middle jiges (Hastings Rashdall), ii, 328-32. It is a wrong conclu- 

 sion from false premises. See National Review, 1895. 



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