SCHOOLS 



the head master's house, and a staff of four assis- 

 tant masters, including a music master and in- 

 structor in art and manual work. The tuition 

 fees are 6 to <) a year, and the boarding fees 

 45 to 51 guineas a year. 



MANSFIELD GRAMMAR SCHOOL 



There does not seem to be any trace of a 

 school, at least an endowed school, in Mansfield 

 before the Dissolution of Chantries in 1548. 

 Mansfield was only a royal manor and village in 

 Sherwood Forest. The Chantry Certificate of 

 I548 1 reports only one chantry priest, the 'Sti- 

 pendiary of Maunsfelde in Sherewood,' and he 

 was only temporary, ' founded by Sysley Flogan, 

 widowe, to mayntaine a prieste to sing masses 

 for terme of certaine yeres.' It is expressly found 

 in answer to the interrogatory whether any 

 preachers, schoolmasters, or poor people were 

 maintained out of the chantry as any such pro- 

 visions were exempted from the Act and by 

 it directed to be continued 'Preacher, scole- 

 master and the pore relieved by this Chauntery, 

 none.' 



The chantry in question, however, became 

 more or less indirectly the foundation of the 

 grammar school. Cicely Flogan, by will in 

 1 52 1, 2 directed that all her lands in the town 

 and lordship of Mansfield, which were copyhold 

 of the Crown manor of Mansfield, and which she 

 had vested in feoffees by a surrender in 1515-16, 

 apparently for ninety-nine years, should go after 

 her death ' to find Sir John Porter, her kinsman, 

 for to sing and say mass in the parish church or 

 in the chapel of St. Lawrence for the souls ' of 

 herself and her husband Robert Flogan and 

 Thomas Edsy, and her father's and mother's 

 souls and all Christian souls, with a stipend of 

 8 marks (^5 6s. 8^/.) a year ; and to continue 

 chantry priests in succession for ninety-nine 

 years. The Chantry Certificate unkindly de- 

 scribes Sir John Porter, who was still the 

 chantry priest and only fifty-four years old, 

 though he had held the chantry for twenty-seven 

 years, as ' unlearned." The lands, being copy- 

 hold, were excluded from the Act. So the 

 commissioners found that 'After thende and 

 terme of 99 yeres begynning in anno 7 

 Henry VIII [i.e. 1515-16] theise parcells before 

 mencioned being but copyholde, are in reversion 

 to theyres of Syssley Flogan.' The lands seem 

 to have been seized or claimed by the Crown, 

 but on the case being brought before the Court 

 of Augmentations in the last year of Edward VI 



1 P.R.O. Chant. Cert. 37, no. 6. 



1 Land Rev. Rec. class v, no. 52. The will is 

 printed in Thoroton's Hist, of Notts, ii, 315, and in a 

 truncated form in W. Harrod's Hist, of Mansfield 

 (1801), pt. i, 5. 



an order was made, 6 June 1553, exemplified in 

 a copy 24 June 1553,' that Thomas Farnworth, 

 the tenant, who held all the property on a long 

 lease from the feoffees, which still had thirty 

 years to run, should pay 5 a year to Porter, 

 who was still living, and 6s. 8d. to the Crown, 

 and at his death the whole rent to the Crown for 

 the residue of the lease, and that the king should 

 have the residue of the term of 80 (? 99) years, 

 of which 62 were unexpired. 



But on 23 February 1557 the vicar and 

 churchwardens were incorporated, by letters 

 patent of Philip and Mary, 31 as governors of the 

 lands and possessions of the parish church of 

 Mansfield, with licence in mortmain to hold 

 lands to the amount of ^40 a year, and were 

 granted the rents of Lady Flogan's lands 

 (S 61. 8^.) and a tenement, part of the pro- 

 perty of the 10 chantry priests (of Southwell), 313 

 altogether worth 6 31. &V., for finding a chap- 

 lain to celebrate in the church and for the relief 

 and support of the burdens of the priest. 



Three years later, on the petition of the in- 

 habitants of Mansfield, Queen Elizabeth, by 

 letters patent 8 March 15601, granted that 

 there should be a school, called the Free Gram- 

 mar School of Queen Elizabeth, in the town of 

 Mansfield for the instruction of boys and youths 

 in grammar, to consist of a master and usher, 

 and incorporated the vicar and churchwardens as 

 ' the governors of the possessions, revenues, and 

 goods ' of the school. This incorporation was 

 legally a distinct entity from the governors of 

 the lands of the parish church, though consisting 

 of the same persons, and using, it is said, the 

 same seal. The incorporated vicar and church- 

 wardens were empowered, with the advice of 

 eight of the more honest inhabitants (inhabitantium 

 magis probiorum hominum), to be chosen by the 

 rest of the parishioners or the greater part of 

 them, to appoint and remove the master and 

 make statutes. Licence in mortmain to take and 

 hold lands up to the annual value of 30 was 

 given. But no lands were granted by the 

 charter. Whether the Flogan lands, given by 

 Queen Mary to the chaplain, were intended to 

 be transferred to the school does not appear ; 

 but a rental of ' Lady Flogan's lands' in 1597 

 contained one column headed 'School Rents,' 30 

 and another column headed ' For the Preacher.' 

 About 1573 John and James Sybethorpe, as the 

 heirs of Lady Flogan, claimed the lands on the 

 ground of intestacy, she having only directed what 

 was to be done with them for ninety-nine years. 



1 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks., 105, fol. 309, 310 ; Land 

 Rev. Rec. class v, no. 52 ; Thoroton, op. cit ii, 

 314-18. 



a Pat. 4 & 5 Phil, and Mary, pt. viii, m. n, 12. 



>b Vakr Eccl. (Rec. Com.), v, 196 ; not of Mans- 

 field, as Thoroton, Hist, of Notts, ii, 213. 



3c The school rents amounted to 26 31. and the 

 rents for the preacher to l I 171. 



245 



