A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



F.asington, Shincliffe and Lanchester were the recipients of similar favours between 1650 and 1653. 

 Indeed, if the restoration had not taken place and destroyed the Durham schools as it destroyed Durham 

 college, the educational movement of the nineteenth century would have been anticipated in 

 elementary as in University education. 



DURHAM MONASTERY SCHOOLS 



At Durham, if we were to believe the uncritical utterances of most writers on early education, 

 we should find the monks of the cathedral monastery keeping a great cloister school for the enlighten- 

 ment of the whole county and diocese. What we do find there, as at other monastic cathedrals, is 

 a school, so small as to be no school, kept by monks for intending monks, in the cloister ; a rather 

 larger school kept under the governance of the monks, but taught by secular clergy, for a few charity 

 boys in the almonry of the monastery ; and, quite outside of the monastery, a real public grammar 

 school with which the monks had nothing whatever to do either in being taught or teaching in it, 

 maintaining or managing it ; but a school superintended and, at Durham, endowed by the bishop, 

 for the use of the general public ; a school of precisely the same character as other ' public ' schools, 

 the public grammar schools, that is, which have furnished secondary education to the upper and 

 middle classes and a selected few from the lower classes ' from the earliest times to the present day.' 



Oddly enough Durham furnishes no actual evidence of any monkish so-called school till after 

 its dissolution, of any almonry school before 1352, or of any public grammar school before 1414. Yet 

 the first and the third must have existed ab initio ; the third indeed from the days of the canons of 

 Durham of the old foundation, before they were turned out, as at Winchester, at Worcester, and at 

 Canterbury, to make room for monks : on the plea of immorality, an immorality which appears 

 to have consisted in the possession of wives and children and private property. 



By a curious accident the first definite mention of education in connection with Durham is in 

 reference not to secondary or school education, but to ' tertiary ' or University education ; and that, 

 though of Durham youths, not at Durham but at Oxford. 



DURHAM HALL AT OXFORD 



In the year 1286 1 the prior and convent of Durham bought from Mabel, abbess of Godstow, 

 part of the present site of Trinity College, then 5 acres of arable land in the suburbs of Oxford. 

 We learn from the chronicler, Robert of Graystanes, that Hugh of Darlington (prior 1286-90) 

 sent monks to study there ; whilst Richard 3 of Hoton, his successor, ' prepared a place at Oxford and 

 caused it to be built.' These seem to be the earliest 8 unquestionable notices of the foundation of 

 a hall or cell of Durham monks at Oxford. The cell of St. Leonard's, Stamford, which seems to 

 have been another resort of Durham monks for the purposes of University education in the fourteenth 

 century, had a separate endowment, but the Oxford Hall seems to have been directly maintained by 

 payments from the mother-abbey for the first century of its existence. It was not till the year 

 1380 that Bishop Hatfield converted Durham Hall into an endowed college. The prior of Durham 

 himself, John of Boryngton, went to London and Northampton to recover a debt of 100 from 

 the king, ' and for the college at Oxford to be founded by the bishop,' whilst a pipe of Malvoisie 

 or Malvoisin, costing j 6s, 8d. y was given to the archbishop for his friendship in making the 

 charters. Ultimately a five-part indenture * was drawn up between the prior and convent, the 

 bishop of Durham, the bishop of Lincoln, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the University of 

 Oxford ; but it was not until 8 November, 1387, that the endowment consisting of the churches 

 of Frampton, Borsalls, Ardington, and Freskleton was granted under a bull of Pope Urban VI., 

 that of Brantingham being afterwards added. It was to consist of eight monks of Durham, 

 of whom one was to be prior, to perform services for the souls of the king, the founder and his 

 relations, and to be students in the superior faculties of law and divinity ; and of eight ' secular 

 scholars,' four from the city or diocese of Durham, and two each from the Yorkshire domains of 

 the monastery at Northallerton and Howden, ' principally intent on grammar and philosophy,' and 

 reading for their sophisters or bachelor of arts degree. These were inferior to the monks in both 

 age and subjects of study and also in social status, waiting on the monk-students in hall and 

 elsewhere, and dining ' at the second table ' with the clerk and other servants. They were, in fact, 

 in the position of the servitors or sizars of later days. Thus endowed, Durham College successfully 

 carried out the small work for which it was chiefly founded that of ensuring that perhaps a tithe 

 of the monks of Durham were educated men. Six of the wardens became priors of Durham ; 



1 Some Durham College Rolls (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), 1896; Collectanea, iii. 7, by H. E. D. Blakiston, and 

 Trln. Coll., by H. E. D. Blakiston (1895), p. 5. Blakiston, Trin. Coll. p. 4. 



* Dr. Fowler has suggested that in a notice of 'a clerk going to Exon ' in 1278 we should read ' Oxon.' 

 See his Durham University (1904), p. z ; Extracts from Durham Account Rolls (Surtees Soc.), 99, 100, 103, 

 iii. 485. 



* Wilkins' Cone. ii. 14, from Durham MSS. 146. iv. 41, f. 22zb. 



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