A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



They must have obtained judgement in their 

 favour (no decree can be found), as they were 

 admitted tenants on the Court Roll 28 July 

 1574, but immediately surrendered them to the 

 use of the governors for the school. On 5 August 

 1589 the vicar and churchwardens 4 were admitted 

 to the same lands and also to other properties 

 (including a messuage in the north part of Scot- 

 land Close [next to] the cemetery, then or lately 

 used for a schoolhouse), which had apparently 

 until 1573 been in the hands of separate trustees, 

 as it had been surrendered to the use of the 

 school on 17 October 1573 by Robert Barley 

 and William Wylde. The vicar and church- 

 wardens were admitted to some of this property 

 in their capacity of ' governors of the possessions 

 of the church.' 



Statutes were duly made for the school, under 

 the charter, on 8 August 1564, by the vicar 

 and churchwardens and eight assistants. They 

 are verbatim the same as the Edwardian statutes 

 for Retford Grammar School, except that instead 

 of setting out the authors to be taught in each 

 form the masters are directed 'to teach such good 

 authors as were most commonly used to be taught 

 in grammar schools.' The salary of the master 

 was settled at ^13 6s. 8d. If, as would appear, 

 there was then no endowment, the money was 

 presumably found by subscription or a voluntary 

 rate, as we saw was the case at Ashbourne 

 Grammar School, Derbyshire, 8 until the Flogan 

 lands were assigned for the benefit of the school 

 in 1574. 



The historians vouchsafe us no information as 

 to the school and its masters before 1673. It 

 appears, however, from the register of Gonville 

 and Caius College that a Mansfield schoolboy, 

 who had been two years under Mr. Bowater 

 (probably Christopher, M.A. of Oxford), entered 

 there as early as 1583, and that another, who 

 had been under Mr. Colley six years, entered in 

 1612-13. The register of St. John's College, 

 Cambridge, shows that the school was sending 

 boys to the university in 1634, soon after the 

 date of the beginning of that register William 

 Cresswell, son of a yeoman at Longdon, Staf- 

 fordshire, being admitted 3 July of that year, at 

 the age of twenty, after being three years at 

 Mansfield under Mr. Poynton. Next year, 

 6 April 1635, Clyfton Clough, son of a yeoman 

 of Whitkirk near Leeds, who had been five years 

 under Mr. Poynton, and then for a year a com- 

 moner (commensalis) at Christ Church, Oxford, 

 was admitted a sizar. A testimonial from 

 Christ Church, in which the name appears as 

 ' Cluff,' showing that the pronunciation was the 

 same then as now, bears witness to the fact that 



4 Char. Com. Rep. xxv, 382. The words in square 

 brackets are a conjectural emendation to make sense, 

 as it appears from subsequent documents that Scotland 

 Close was not the cemetery but next to the cemetery. 



* V.C.H. Deri, ii, 257. 



scholars went from Mansfield to both universities. 

 Both boys would seem to have been boarders. 

 Poynton's predecessor was named Walker. 6 * He- 

 seems to have been succeeded in the mastership 

 by Mr. Hallowell, who sent a boy to Gonville 

 and Caius in i64i. 6b 



A somewhat obscure transaction took place in 

 1606-7, by which the school acquired further 

 endowment. Lands of about 100 acres, called 

 the Eight Men's Intake, an ancient inclosure 

 from the common or waste lands of the manor 

 of Mansfield, which the vicar and churchwardens 

 had held to the use of the concionator or preacher 

 of Mansfield, had seemingly been recovered for 

 the Crown. It must be remembered that 

 until comparatively recent times, after the 

 Restoration, it was not the duty, or at all events 

 the practice, of an ordinary parish priest to 

 preach. He was a mass priest. From the time 

 of Henry VI, or perhaps earlier, there were 

 special endowments for the support of preachers,, 

 such as that in Archbishop Rotherham's founda- 

 tion of Jesus College at Rotherham, where the 

 provost was specially endowed as preacher, wholly 

 independent of the vicar. Some such endow- 

 ment as this must have existed at Mansfield, and 

 remained in the hands of the vicar and church- 

 wardens, which had now come to the Crown 

 on the motion of some of the informers who 

 made a regular trade in suits to recover lands 

 for the Crown which fell under the various Acts 

 for the dissolution of monasteries and of chantries. 

 On suit brought it was now held to fall under 

 the Chantries Act as superstitious, and recovered 

 from the vicar and churchwardens for the Crown. 

 James I sold these lands, said to be of the net value 

 of ^5, to two persons, William Derson and 

 Thomas Eley of London, together with other 

 property, for ^560 iSs. 8^., conveyed by letters 

 patent of 20 February 16067. A month later,. 

 1 8 March 1606-7, tne purchasers sold them 

 for ,20, paid by the churchwardens, to the 

 king's use, and conveyed them to eight persons,, 

 who were no doubt the same as the eight probi 

 homines, assistants to the vicar and church- 

 wardens, without declaring any trusts. By deed 

 3 March 1625-6 the property was vested in 

 one of the surviving trustees to lease them as 

 agricultural land, the rents to be employed to 

 ' divers necessary and behoofful uses of the said 

 town,' clearly showing that they thought the old 

 use for the preacher had come to an end, as of 

 course it had when the lands were recovered for 

 the Crown, and that they had been bought back by 

 the inhabitants for general purposes. During the 

 Commonwealth some dispute arose as to the use 

 of the rents, and at a public meeting of inhabitants,, 

 held on 24 October 1654, it was agreed to settle 

 the lands one-third for the vicar, one-third for 



** J. Venn, Biog. Hist, of Gonville and Caius Coll. \ r 

 290 ; W. H. Groves, Hist, of Mansfield, 162. 

 4b J. Venn, op. cit. i, 345. 



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