A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



only for the child or children of such sub- 

 scribers thereunto who then were or thereafter 

 should be inhabitants of the parishes of St. 

 Michael and St. Anne in Sutton alias Sutton 

 Bonnington.' The total subscriptions amounted 

 to ii I 1 3*. 6<f., besides ' the ground whereon 

 the school is to be built ' given by Charles Par- 

 kyns, which is recited in a later deed as ' given 

 for a Free School.' Henry and William Tate, 

 however, actually found the money for building 

 the school, so the subscriptions of ^i 1 1 13*. 6d., 

 with jioo given by the rector, were applied in 

 buying lands for the endowment of it, some 

 29 acres at Barrow on Soar. These were con- 

 veyed by deeds of 8 and 9 April 1725 to trus- 

 tees, for ' a schoolmaster that should be well 

 qualified to teach children to read, write, and cast 

 accounts, and the Latin tongue, for the use of the 

 children of the inhabitants.' If this school ever 

 was higher than elementary or really taught 

 Latin, long before 1829 it had ceased to be free 

 or to be anything but elementary, and it has 

 remained an elementary school ever since. 



This was the last attempt at a grammar school. 

 Subsequent founders frankly founded elementary 

 schools as some previous ones had done. No 

 addition was made to the secondary schools of 

 the county for another 150 years. Not, indeed, 

 that no addition was wanted. But a blight 

 seems to have fallen on nearly all public secondary 

 schools, except the greatest, about the middle of 

 the 1 8th century. The causes of this are very 

 obscure. One cause was the growth of dissent 

 among the prosperous trading and mercantile 

 classes, accompanied by a development of exclusive- 

 ness in the Church of England, so that while the 

 Church monopolized the governing bodies and 

 excluded all who would not repeat the Church 

 Catechism, the schools were left to the upper and 

 lowest classes. With the development of means 

 of communication the upper classes flocked more 

 and more to the great public schools, so that 

 eventually the free grammar schools became the 

 refuge of the destitute and a few clergymen's, 

 lawyers', and doctors' sons. Private schools 

 took the middle classes. Moreover, religious 

 dissent was accompanied by educational dis- 

 sent. A profound disbelief in a classical educa- 

 tion overspread the middle classes, and it seems 

 to have been amply justified by classics as taught 

 in most local grammar schools. They would 

 not teach the new subjects, and deadness had 

 overspread the old. Moreover, in most cases the 

 pay of the masters had not been increased with 

 the pay of other professions. Largely owing 

 to the misfeasance or apathy of governing bodies, 

 the endowments were stationary, and the remedy 

 of proper tuition fees was not tried or was declared 

 illegal, while the buildings were decrepit and 

 long out of date. From some or all of these 

 causes, the decay of the ancient schools was 

 almost universal. In Nottinghamshire the decay 



and decadence were most marked in the 

 century. Nottingham and Newark were reduced 

 to a position little above elementary schools ; East 

 Retford and Mansfield were actually in abeyance ; 

 and Southwell, which managed to retain a certain 

 status until 1 840, sank to the same condition when 

 practically deprived of endowment by the with- 

 drawal of the adventitious aid of subsidiary clerical 

 offices in the minster. Revival came in the 

 second half of the igth century, after the reform 

 of municipalities and other local governments 

 and the removal of religious disabilities had had 

 time to make themselves felt. The liberal move- 

 ment penetrated the sphere of education. As in 

 ancient times, the universities were the first to 

 feel its effects, which culminated in the Univer- 

 sities Commission Act of 1854 ; the great public 

 schools next, in the Public Schools Act of 

 1863 ; and, finally, the other public or grammar 

 schools in the Endowed Schools Act of 1869. 

 Before those Acts were actually passed the agita- 

 tion for them produced some reform. The en- 

 dowments were, so far as circumstances allowed, 

 restored to their proper uses. Nottingham was 

 the first of Nottinghamshire schools to reform 

 itself by a private Act of Parliament in 1860. 

 Schemes of the Court of Chancery after long 

 delays restored their life to East Retford and 

 Mansfield. The doors were thrown open to 

 Dissenters. Finally, schemes under the Endowed 

 Schools Acts passed by the Endowed Schools Com- 

 missioners, the Charity Commissioners, and the 

 Board of Education, by reconstituting the govern- 

 ing bodies on the old principle of representative 

 government, sweeping away clerical restrictions, 

 frankly recognizing the necessity of tuition fees, 

 modernizing the curricula, and, above all, by 

 substituting an elastic code of regulations, capable 

 of easy alteration from time to time by amend- 

 ing schemes, for the cast-iron will of the founder, 

 have placed the schools in a better position to 

 adapt their work to the needs of the day than 

 they have ever previously enjoyed. The result 

 is that never in the history of education have the 

 secondary schools of Nottinghamshire been fuller 

 or more prosperous than now, and never have they 

 more deserved to be so. So far from reform having 

 deadened private beneficence as some prophesied, 

 it has called it to life again. The large number 

 of exhibition foundations at Nottingham, and 

 the gifts to Nottingham University College, are 

 notable examples. But the most remarkable 

 instance in the county probably is the new 

 spacious site and ample playing-fields, and half 

 the total cost of rebuilding on the new site the 

 Magnus Grammar School at Newark, given by 

 Mr. T. Earp, a Nonconformist and a former 

 Liberal M.P. Having made his own fortune in 

 business, he has thus restored the fortunes of the 

 school founded by an eminent Churchman who 

 made his fortune out of ecclesiastical preferments 

 nearly four centuries ago. Other developments 



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