SCHOOLS 



petitioned for the power to grant degrees and to become a university. Oliver Cromwell, however, 

 died 3 September, 1658. In November Richard Cromwell was petitioned for the same purpose. 

 Oxford and Cambridge strongly opposed the grant of university powers on 16 April, 1659, anc ^ 

 an order already drafted giving them was on 22 April suspended. Next year came the Restoration, 

 and with it the endowments of Durham College reverted from educational to ecclesiastical uses, 

 and Durham had to wait nearly two centuries more for its university. 



THE SCHOOL AT THE RESTORATION 



Elias Smith seems to have retained his mastership at the Restoration, for one reason, perhaps, 

 because he had preserved the copes, now 1 to be seen in the present chapter library, the old dormitory. 

 But the Treasurer's Book for 1661-2 omits the names of master and usher. He appears, however, 

 as minor canon and chaplain of St. Mary Magdalen, and librarian. On 6 November, 1660, the 

 chapter ordered a survey of the timber yet standing in Bearpark ' to repair the ruins of the church, 

 college and schoolhouse, etc.' On the same day they decreed ' a solemne election of the king's 

 schollers' places, with such exercises and examination publique in the schoole as is usuale in other 

 schooles belonging to cathedralls and colleges upon like occasions, and that notice be given to the 

 Schoolemaster at a convenient tyme before the eleccion for their better preparation.' 



The St. John's College Register records the admission of a sizar on 28 May, 1662, who had 

 been educated under Mr. Holden, of Durham school. If he was a master of the grammar school 

 there, this is the sole record of him, owing to the meagreness of the Chapter Act Book of the time. 

 The Treasurer's Book gives no names of or payments to master or usher for the years 1660-2. 



On 3 July, 1661, a Chapter Act records among the reasons for dividing up among the canons 

 the fines for new leases, their own praises for the work they had done, including ' the building of a 

 new school house.' This new school house appears to have been that which served for the school 

 until the removal to the present site in 1 840. It was not on the old site of Langley's School, but 

 on a new site on the opposite side of the Palace Green at the corner by ' Windy Gap,' and is now 

 used as a lecture room by the university. 



In 16623, Richard Smelt, who had left in disgust in 1640, re-appears with the old 

 stipend of 10 and 20 augmentation, which had been wrung from the chapter, chiefly, no 

 doubt, owing to the example of the Commonwealth, by a letter from the king. William Hanby 

 or Handby was the usher, with an augmentation of 3 6s. %d. making up his salary to 10. 

 Meanwhile John Foster, the master of the choristers, received an augmentation of 30, or four 

 times his statutable stipend. Smelt only stayed till Michaelmas, 1665, being succeeded for a 

 year by Samuel Bolton. Hanby remained usher for twenty-eight years to 168990, but from 

 1678 he was seemingly only nominally so, as in that year he is described as ' hypodidascalo 

 emerito,' and received the pay as a pension ; while Thomas Thompson, 1675-80, then William 

 Salkeld, 1680 2, William Singleton, 16834, Barnabas Hutchinson, 16846, Leonard Deane, 

 16867, an d J' ln Pakin or Parkin also received the same pay and did the work. Indeed, 

 Hanby must have been incapacitated even earlier than 1678, as from 16737 Nicholas Fewster is 

 also described as ' hipodidascalus,' but received only ,5 salary. 



In 1666 the bishop, John Cosin, who as prebendary had quarrelled with Peter Smart, built 

 on the site of the Langley schools an almshouse with a school house at each end ; one on the 

 north with an inscription now only partially legible, 'Schola pro addiscendis rudimimentis literarum,* 

 and one on the south inscribed ' Schola pro piano cantu et arte scribendi.' By deed of 31 August, 

 1 668, he granted to the two schools the old stipend of 8 6s. Sd. each ' paid by the king's officers,' 

 and the pension of 2 each from the bishop's revenues, with an annuity of 70 from the manor of 

 Great Chiltern for the four men and four women in the almshouses. Two other annuities were 

 given by deed of 12 August, 1668 ; one to St. Peter's College, better known as Peterhouse, 

 Cambridge, of 50 a year for five scholarships, and the other of 20 to the masters and fellows 

 for three scholarships. 



This was all very well. But the bishop had no right to take away the stipend of Langley's 

 Grammar Schoolmaster from the master of the cathedral grammar school, to whom it had been 

 paid, not only as the dean and chapter alleged ever since the reign of Elizabeth,' but as we have 

 seen ever since the institution of the grammar school by Henry VIII. Dean Sudbury wrote 

 up to the Treasury to prevent their paying the crown stipend to Cosin's nominee, and Cosin then 

 directed the inquiry to be made which he ought to have made before.' Eventually he had to 



1 Mickleton, f. 6l. 



' The writer of the report of the Commissioners of Inquiry in 1830 (see Rep. on Endowed Char. In Dur. 

 1900, p. 3), says that ' it is difficult to conceive that it commenced so early as the reign of Elizabeth ; for if 

 the school had a mere nominal existence. . . . some notice would have been taken by him (Cosin) of such a 

 circumstance.' 



8 Dur. Chapter MSS. Hunter's MS. 13, No. 51, printed in Cosin's Correspondence (Surtees Soc.), Letter 

 to Bp. Staple ton, 23 Jan. 1668. 



