SCHOOLS 



or should be thereafter settled upon it to the 

 value of 20 nobles (6 13*. 4^.) a year, of 

 which the house and close of ground whereon 

 the house stood were estimated at 7 nobles, out 

 of which the said schoolmaster was to allow 

 65. 8d. for entertaining the governor and assis- 

 tants.' Four acres and a cottage was the whole 

 endowment beyond the schoolhouse and garden, 

 and was worth in 1835 only ^15 a year. 



The upward limit of number set by the 

 founder was, however, only 30, though he was 

 to instruct ' such of the scholars as were capable 

 in the Latin tongue and upwards, 8 until they 

 should be fit for the university if their parents or 

 friends should desire it, and be able to maintain 

 them there.' But the children were likewise 

 to be taught to write and read written hand, 

 and to cipher and cast accounts, viz. to be 

 taught in arithmetic, till they should attain the 

 five first rules therein, i.e. as far as rule of 

 three, but not fractions. This founder, how- 

 ever, can hardly have seriously contemplated a 

 grammar school, and he seems to have hoped 

 only for birds of passage as masters, as he pro- 

 vided that the schoolmaster should ' engage to 

 continue in the free school for 5 years at least.' 



Yet we find so late as 1688 John Sampson 

 founding by deed, 26 March 1688-9, ^e year 

 of the ' Glorious revolution,' a free grammar 

 school at South Leverton, and thinking ^20 a 

 year enough endowment for a new foundation 

 of that kind, and, unfortunately, giving that, not 

 in lands producing that rental, but in the form 

 of a fixed rent-charge of 20 a year issuing out 

 of his own lands in the parish. The uses of 

 this 20 he declared by will of 1 6 September 

 1691. Reciting that he had erected certain 

 buildings and tenements for a free grammar 

 school and for a convenient habitation for a 

 schoolmaster, for the teaching of the youth and 

 children of the inhabitants of South Leverton to 

 read English, and further also to teach and in- 

 struct in Latin and Greek, he proceeded to es- 

 tablish a governing body of eight trustees, headed 

 by Sir Thomas Parkyns, with four neighbouring 

 parsons to assist them to manage the property, 

 elect the masters, act as visitors, and reform abuses. 

 He also showed by the rules and regulations 

 he laid down, that he really contemplated a bona- 

 fide grammar school, though it was to perform 

 the functions of an elementary school as well. 

 For the master was to be a graduate of Oxford 

 or Cambridge and Master of Arts if it may 

 be, or otherwise an orthodox minister or preacher 

 of God's Word ; he was not to hold any 

 ecclesiastical living further than within the 

 parish, and was to teach reading, English, Latin, 

 and Greek gratuitously (thus showing what 

 he thought a free grammar school to mean) 

 to the children of South Leverton. A rather 



8 The upwards includes Hebrew. 



exceptional requirement, which has, however, 

 parallels elsewhere about this time, is that ' female 

 children be not admitted.' This is one among 

 several indications that the female sex were then 

 beginning to intrude on the male monopoly of 

 the grammar schools. Probably the school was 

 intended to be of the type of the old parish 

 schools of Scotland, where ' stickit ministers ' 

 taught Latin and Greek to any stray clever lad 

 there might be, and he was helped to the 

 university. But for common folk it was just an 

 elementary school. At South Leverton it had 

 become customary to appoint the vicar as master, 

 but by 1835 he had devolved his duties on 

 an usher, and the founder's rules were honoured 

 by breach in every particular, as only reading was 

 taught free, 'id. a week being charged for the 

 other two R's ; girls, too, were admitted, and 

 paying scholars from other parishes. 



The mention of Latin in the foundation of 

 schools seems, however, to have been a sort of 

 incantation, the repetition of a formula devoid of 

 any real meaning. Thus at Walkeringham, Robert 

 Woodhouse, who founded a school by will, 

 19 May 1719, giving ^15 a year rent-charge 

 as endowment, directed it should be paid to a 

 schoolmaster ' to teach and instruct in the English 

 and Latin tongues, and in writing and arithme- 

 tic, the children of the inhabitants of the town.' 

 The owner of his lands, with consent of four 

 inhabitants, was to appoint or displace the master, 

 and the vicar was expressly to have no authority 

 in such election or displacing, nor was he to be 

 master except with the consent of all the inhabi- 

 tants of the town. A bonus was offered to tempt 

 a master to stay four years. He was to teach 

 freely, without demanding or requiring any re- 

 ward or payment beyond the endowment. The 

 founder was a very arbitrary person. No persons 

 were to have the benefit of the school that 

 should endeavour to keep up the feast of Walk- 

 eringham in the harvest time, which, in the 

 donor's judgement, tended much to the in- 

 convenience of the town ; nor such persons as 

 should oppose the majority of the town in 

 making good orders for the good government of 

 the town ; nor such poor persons as should beg, 

 or work abroad when there should be work 

 for them in the said town, and should refuse 

 to be content with common wages. We can 

 hardly imagine a beggar's children attending a 

 grammar school, even if it was free. 



Latin appears, too, in the rather exceptional 

 foim of foundation which took place at Sutton 

 Bonnington. The then rector, Charles Livesay, 

 with Jane and Charles Parkyns, the two principal 

 landowners, and 133 other persons, covenanted 

 under their hands and seals, by deed of I July 

 1718, to pay the sums set opposite their names, 

 and the rector covenanted to employ jioo 

 in erecting a schoolhouse and endowing it. 

 The school was declared ' to be for ever free 



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