SCHOOLS 





arising out of the improved administration of old 

 foundations are the girls' grammar school at 

 Mansfield and the girls' school at Newark, still 

 in embryo, and the Brunts' Technical School 

 at Mansfield. Modern corporate activity has 

 shown itself in the Nottingham High Pavement 

 Secondary School, descended from an old British 

 school founded in 1788 and transferred to the 

 Nottingham School Board in 1891, enlarged 

 into a higher-grade elementary school in 1870 

 and later developing into an Organized Science 

 School, and in 1907 still further exalted by 

 the City Council, as the local education authority 

 under the Education Act, 1902, into a secondary 

 school for some 600 boys and girls. A per- 

 haps still more modern enterprise is that of 

 the Nottingham Girls' High School in Arboretum 

 Street, founded by one of the latest specimens 

 of corporate activity, the Girls' Public Day 

 School Company, Limited, lately converted into 

 an endowed company, and the school into an 

 endowed school, where some 300 girls receive 

 the highest form of secondary education, and go 

 forth to compete, not unsuccessfully, with men 

 in triposes and class lists for all subjects at Oxford 

 and Cambridge. 



SOUTHWELL MINSTER GRAMMAR 

 SCHOOL 



It is through the connexion of Nottinghamshire, 

 at some unknown, or at least doubtful, date, with 

 the Northumbrian kingdom, instead of the 

 Mercian kingdom, with which geographically it 

 would seem more connected, that the history of 

 Southwell Grammar School has been so well pre- 

 served. For at Southwell the bishop of the 

 Northumbrian kingdom, the Archbishop of York, 

 had one of the four cathedrals or bishops' stools 

 of his enormous diocese, which included in the 

 nth century Lincolnshire, and until the middle 

 of the i gth century Nottinghamshire in addition 

 to Yorkshire. What Beverley Minster was to 

 the East Riding of Yorkshire, Southwell Minster 

 was to Nottinghamshire. ' The collegiatte 

 churche of our Blessid ladye the Virgyn of 

 Sowthewelle comenly called Southwell Mynstre ' l 

 was according to the Chantry Commissioners of 

 Henry VIII ' reputed and taken for the hed 

 mother churche of the towne and countie of 

 Nottingham, wherein is sedes archicpiscopalis, and 

 so allowed by the Kinges maiesties grace 3 yers 

 paste by an Acte of Parliamente, and the chapter 

 of the same churche have particuliere jurisdiccion 

 and is exempted ab omni archiephcopali [jurisdic- 

 cione] preterquam in causis appellacionum et 

 negligencie. Whiche collegiate churche of 

 auncient tyme was founded by the righte famous 

 of memorye, Edgare, the Kinges maiesties most 



1 A. F. Leach, Eng 1. Schools at the Reformation, 1 6 1 , 

 from Chant. Cert. 13, no. 40. 



noble progenitor.' It has been shown by the 

 present writer that there is some reason to doubt 

 the ascription of the foundation to King Edgar. 2 

 The earliest document referring to Southwell 

 contained in the York chartulary, 3 the Liber 

 Albus or White Book, is a grant by ' Eadwy 

 rex,' who may or may not be intended to be 

 Edgar's predecessor and brother, in 958. It is 

 quite likely that if the grant is genuine at all it 

 represents a gift by some Northumbrian king of 

 the name, and not the later West Saxon over- 

 lord. But, however that may be, it is certain 

 that Southwell Minster was a Saxon foundation 

 at least 100 years before the Norman Con- 

 quest, a church of secular (that is, ordinary) 

 canons, or clergy, like our modern cathedral 

 canons, who formed the Archbishop of York's 

 chapter for Nottinghamshire. The chapter 

 originally consisting of seven canons like York 

 itself, a number afterwards enlarged to sixteen 

 exercised in the archbishop's stead the 

 archbishop's ordinary jurisdiction, though the 

 Archdeacon of Nottingham had his stall not in 

 Southwell Minster but in York Minster, and an 

 appeal lay from the chapter to the archbishop. 

 In virtue of their jurisdiction as ordinary the 

 chapter had control of the schools of the county, 

 just as that of Lincoln had over those of Lin- 

 colnshire, that of York in Yorkshire, and that of 

 Beverley in the liberty of Beverley. Just as the 

 chancellor of these churches exercised this control 

 on behalf of the chapters, so the canon or pre- 

 bendary of Normanton, a church and parish 

 close to Southwell, as chancellor of the minster 

 exercised the control in Nottinghamshire. No 

 doubt he had originally taught the school himself. 

 But there are no records at Southwell earlier than 

 the second quarter of the I3th century, by which 

 time everywhere the title and work of school- 

 master had given place to the title of chancellor, 

 and the work of a lesral adviser and the teaching 



O O 



of theology only remained to him. The first men- 

 tion of schools in the extant records of Southwell 

 is in connexion with a dispute about Newark 

 Grammar School in 1238, related at length in the 

 history of that school. A marginal note on the 

 entry says : ' Since the collations of grammar 

 schools throughout the whole archdeaconry of 

 Nottingham belong wholly and solely to the pre- 

 bendary of Normanton in the collegiate church 

 of Southwell, as chancellor in the same church,' 

 the particular agreement set out as to Newark, 

 which derogated from the right of collation of 

 the prebendary of Normanton, was bad. The 

 next mention of schools in relation to Southwell 



'Mem. of Southwell Minster (Camd. Soc. 1891), 

 new ser. xix, xx, no. 48. 



3 Dugdale, Man. vi, 1312; Kemble, Cod. Difl. 

 472. The deed as printed purports to be witnessed 

 by Edgar, the king's brother. But in the original 

 MS. this witness is not Edgar, but ' Eagelr frater 

 regis.' 



