SCHOOLS 



Ecclesiastical Commissioners refused a grant for 

 the school under section 27 of the Endowed 

 Schools Act, 1869, which gave them power, and 

 practically directed them to give grants to a 

 school forming part of the foundation of any 

 cathedral or collegiate church. So the scheme 

 was not proceeded with. In 1897 t ' le Rev- 

 Joseph Souden Wright, who had long acted as 

 master, succeeded his father in the mastership. 

 He won a leaving exhibition from Cowley's 

 School, Donnington, and was a scholar of 

 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. 



At length, after the establishment of a quasi- 

 collegiate church with a chapter of honorary and 

 unpaid canons, the present writer had the satis- 

 faction as an Examiner of the Board of Education 

 of completing the scheme which had been begun 

 nearly twenty years before. It was sealed by the 

 Board under the Charitable Trusts Acts 22 De- 

 cember 1902. The scheme created a governing 

 body of thirteen persons, the Bishop of Southwell 

 and the rector ex officio, two appointed by the 

 honorary canons, two each by the councils of the 

 parish and rural district of Southwell and the 

 county of Nottingham, one each by the governing 

 bodies of Nottingham University College and of 

 Trinity and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge. The 

 tuition fees to be charged are fixed at from jf 6 

 to ji2 a year, and boarding fees at 50 a year. 

 The school now contains some 50 boys, of whom 

 about half are boarders. Alas ! the whole en- 

 dowment which this august body has to manage 

 amounts to 47 4*. a year: consisting of the com- 

 muted Crown payment, reduced by the deduction 

 of fees before commutation, and the reduction in 

 the interest of consols since, to j 4.1. a year, 

 and 40 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, 

 made up of the old payment of ^2 from the 

 Canon of Normanton as Chancellor, 12 from 

 the chapter revenues, 20 the augmented 

 payment of the song schoolmaster, 2 a year 

 given for prizes in the grammar school, and 2 

 for general purposes of the song school. If the 

 school had its due proportion of the revenues of 

 the church, according to ancient payments, it is 

 certain that not less than ten, and probably not 

 less than thirty, times that sum should be pay- 

 able. Another ,60 a year is payable to the 

 school so long as the choristers are educated in 

 it. At the next shuffle of ecclesiastical revenues 

 perhaps the rights of this immemorial institution 

 to a proper share of the revenues of the collegiate 

 church may receive as much recognition as some 

 vicarage of yesterday. 



THE MAGNUS GRAMMAR SCHOOL, 

 NEWARK 



Newark Grammar School was supposed to 

 date, and to be early at that, from the gift of the 

 endowment it still enjoys made by Archdeacon 

 Magnus in 1530-1, until it was shown, from the 



records of Southwell Minster, that it existed 

 some 300 years before that at least, being the 

 subject of a dispute terminated by arbitration in 

 1238. Further, it was shown to have been 

 frequented by two nephews or other relations of 

 an Archbishop of York a century later, while a 

 presentation to its mastership in 1485 was also 

 extant. 1 Since then more gaps in its history have 

 been rilled up by the researches of Mr. Cornelius 

 Brown among the Newark Town Records, and 

 the results published in his History of Newark, 

 which appeared at the end of 1907, a few weeks 

 after the author died. 



The first mention of the school certainly 

 shows that it was no new foundation, but one 

 which may have existed for a century or more. 

 Inserted in the White Book of Southwell 

 Minster for the sake of preserving on record a 

 settlement by the highest judicial authority in 

 the Church the pope affecting one of the chief 

 rights and duties of the Chapter of Southwell, is 

 a ' Letter on the right of presentation of the 

 school of Newark ' (' Littera de jure presenta- 

 cionis scolarum de Newerke '). 



It is so important a document in the history 

 not only of Newark School and Southwell 

 Minster, but of schools in general, that it must 

 be given in full : 



Know all sons of holy mother church to whose 

 notice the present letters shall come that when a suit 

 had been brought by the authority of the Lord Pope 

 between Stephen, cardinal priest by the title of 

 Saint Mary Trastevere ( trans Tiberim}, canon of 

 Southwell (Suwell), of the one part, and the Prior and 

 convent of the canons of S. Katharine, of the other, as 

 to the collation of the school of Newark, at length 

 the said suit was settled between 2 the Lord Abbot of 

 La Roche (de Rttfe), proctor of the same Cardinal in 

 England, with the consent of the chapter of South- 

 well, by a friendly agreement in this manner : 



In the year, to wit, of the incarnation of the Lord 

 1238, viz., that the said Prior and Convent shall in 

 chapter at Southwell present a clerk for the rectorship 

 of the school aforesaid fit to instruct boys in the art 

 of grammar to the canon, or to the keeper of the said 

 prebend for the time being, if the canon shall not be 

 present, as often as it may happen to be vacant, 

 which clerk shall be admitted by the canon or keeper 

 of the said prebend without any difficulty ; and the 

 same clerk shall swear canonical obedience to the 

 canon of the said prebend and to the chapter. 



But if the said clerk shall offend in anything against 

 the liberties of the church of Southwell or of the said 

 prebend, if he remain incorrigible, and the said Prior 

 and Convent shall be negligent in punishing him for 

 any his excesses which require correction, he shall, 

 after receiving a mandate in that behalf from the 



1 A. F. Leach, Memorials of Southwell Minster (Camd. 

 Soc.), xli, xlii, 52. 



1 Sic. It is probably one of the sins of the docu- 

 ment referred to in the note attached to it that it is 

 not stated who was the representative of the other 

 side between whom and the abbot the compromise 

 was effected. 



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