SCHOOLS 



The ancient provision of secondary education in ' the Bishoprick ' of Durham, before the 

 Reformation, was in all probability far greater relatively to the population than that made at any 

 other period until we come to the present century. The county was studded with the bishop's 

 manors to which, like the king, he shifted his court from time to time as business required, and, 

 perhaps, as his numerous retinue ate up the country round. In the towns in which the chief 

 houses were planted, probably because the larger population made them safer, while the 

 revenues were more ample and provisions more abundant, the churches became rich and were 

 collegiated. Whether it was from a love of a good musical service, or of state, or merely of 

 cultured company, certain it is that the bishops loved to establish in their manors wherever possible, 

 instead of a single priest, rector, or vicar, a staff of priests with their subordinate ministers, and, as 

 an essential, indeed, statutory, that is, canonical requirement of collegiate churches, a public grammar 

 school with a master, and, usually, also an usher to teach it. Unfortunately, but scant evidences of 

 the collegiate churches of the bishops in Durham have been preserved. While there is ample 

 evidence as to the effective maintenance of the grammar schools in the Yorkshire possessions of the 

 church of Durham at Northallerton, at Howden, and at Hemingbrough, there is none as to those 

 of Durham itself. The reason is that the priors of Durham had somehow, through the laziness or 

 the intermission of the bishops, acquired the rights of ' Ordinary of the spirituality of St. Cuthbert 

 in Yorkshire,' in Allertonshire, as it is termed, Howdenshire, and Hemingbrough ; and the registers of 

 the Priory remain and give us a great deal of information, while the registers of the archdeacons are 

 mostly lost, and those of the bishops are imperfect and often meagre. So while we know that Grammar 

 Schoolmasters were appointed, and two schools, one of grammar and the other of song, were duly kept 

 at Howden in 1393,' at Hemingbrough in 1394, and at Northallerton in 1321* (which at North- 

 allerton became one school in 1385 and later), there is no evidence whatever yet forthcoming 

 as to the existence of the grammar school of Durham itself before 1414, nor, except for a 

 casual reference to a schoolmaster coming from Darlington to Durham to fill a casual 

 vacancy in 1416, of the grammar schools in any of the collegiate churches in the county 

 of Durham before the Reformation. Yet it is almost certainly lack of records and 

 perhaps lack of access to and of research in existing records, not the lack of the schools, that 

 prevents us from filling up this page in the history. We cannot doubt that if dependencies in 

 Yorkshire were properly provided with schools that the capital itself and the nearer colleges of 

 Bishop Auckland, Chester le Street, Darlington and Norton were not left without those inseparable 

 accidents of collegiate churches. 



At Norton, indeed, there is evidence of the conversion of the prebends of the collegiate church 

 in its latter days into University exhibitions. At Barnard Castle, where an ancient guild existed, 

 the document recording its dissolution gives evidence of its revenues being partly applied to education. 



If, however, Durham is deficient in evidence as to its schools in early days, it compensates for 

 it by the abundance of documents as to the Commonwealth and Protectorate periods, during which 

 in common repute schools were stifled, if not killed. The truth is exactly the opposite. In those 

 parts of the country in which Parliament prevailed, not only were existing schools nourished but 

 augmented, and new schools were multiplied. On 22 February, 1649-50, a bill was brought into 

 Parliament 'for the better propagating of the Gospel in the four northern counties, and for the main- 

 tenance of godly and able ministers and schoolmasters there,' and commissioners appointed for the 

 purpose. The dealings of this commission with the endowed grammar schools are related under the 

 heading of the separate schools. Besides this, they instituted schools, chiefly elementary, all over the 

 county. Thus, I December, 1652, they ordered that 15 a year 'bee granted for the maintenance 

 of a schoolmaster at Ferry Hill for the education of youth in piety and good literature in that towne 

 and the townes and places adjacent.' Good literature meant grammar. But on 4 March, 1652-3, 

 ' whereas there is exceeding great want of a schoolmaster in the part of Sunderland to teach children 

 to write and instruct them in arithmetique to fitt them for the sea or other necessary callings,' they 

 ordered 5 6s. 8J. to be settled upon George Harrison, as schoolmaster, for the purpose. A similar 

 formula was used as late as 3 March, 1655-6, at Nether Heworth, where 16 was settled, 

 and trustees appointed to manage the school. Whickham, Stanhope, Staindrop, Brancepeth, 



1 Early Torkihire Schools (York*. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. 1903), ii. 84. > Ibid. 60. 



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