A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



give way, find other promotion for his nominee, and allow Thomas Battersby, who had become 

 headmaster at the beginning of 1667 to re-enter on the stipends and the house and school which 

 Cosin had built. 



Thomas Battersby is perhaps a son or nephew of Mr. Battersby, who was master of the little 

 grammar school at Dent, near Sedbergh in Yorkshire, in 1640. He was, as we shall see, head- 

 master of Darlington Grammar School in 1664-7. Battersby sent a considerable contingent of 

 pupils to St. John's, Cambridge, many of whom must have been boarders, as some of them were 

 scions of the great houses of the northern counties, such as Richard, son of Sir Thomas Burton, 

 knt. of Brampton, Westmorland, 1677; William, 1682, and John and Ferdinand, 1686, sons of 

 Sir William Forster or Forrester, knt., of Bamburgh ; John, son of Henry Hilton, esq. ' by the 

 custom of the place called Baron Hilton,' 1687 ; Robert, son of Robert Shaftoe, near Newcastle, 

 and so forth. One of them, Thomas Baker, who with his elder brother George, then eighteen, 

 was admitted to St. John's, Cambridge, 13 June, 1674, at the age of sixteen, was the 'socius 

 ejectus,' who composed an often quoted MS. since published by Professor J. E. B. Mayor in his 

 history of the college. A list of no less than eight undermasters is given by Mickleton as having 

 served in Battersby's time, which lasted till 1691. His successor, in a controversy to be presently 

 mentioned, says that ' the school is now in a very low condition,' and his antagonist replied : ' But 

 who, I pray you, brought this school into this low condition ? Was it not he that grew so rich 

 by incroachments that he neither regarded the school's reputation nor his own ? ' which meant 

 simply that he had the boys taught writing. 



The school indeed seems to have suffered by the competition of a private school, established in 

 the town by a Mr. Rosse, who contributed a considerable number of pupils to St. John's, 

 Cambridge, and is probably the person pointed at by the next headmaster 'as having as full a 

 license (from the bishop) as his (what he is told was never done before).' 



Thomas Rudd, who became headmaster in January, 1690-1, was son of a vicar of Stockton 

 and rector of Long Newton, and was of Trinity College, Cambridge. Almost immediately 

 after his entrance he was plunged into a controversy about the stipend of Langley's 

 Grammar School. Battersby, after he had regained possession of the house and school, 

 had let them to one Mr. Peter Nelson, who carried on a private and preparatory school 

 there. When Rudd came in, Nelson had obtained from the bishop, Lord Crewe, on 

 a rechauffl of Cosin's old story, his support to a claim for the grant to him of Langley's 

 school. Rudd had to present a petition to the dean and chapter to support his cause against 

 Nelson, and it was perhaps with a view to this that Mickleton's valuable memorandum on the 

 schools was written. In his memorial Rudd complains that Nelson, ' contrary to what was ever 

 done upon the Palace greene in the memory of man, doth teach considerably above the rudiments of 

 grammar.' Nelson in his answer says : ' Truly not very considerably as yet, but I know not what 

 I may do hereafter, if I should have a licence for it ; and I never yet taught half so far as my 

 licence extends, in which I have foolishly wronged myself out of respect to the grammar school, 

 and have recommended divers scholars to others when I might have kept them longer, and to 

 requite my kindness the grammar school has of late been formed into a petty school and a writing 

 school too, and so taken away a great part of my proper employment.' He then gives a home 

 thrust by asking what Rudd ' does for his own salary, being paid by the king's scholars ? This 

 I have heard much complained of, and found considerable persons not well satisfied. He will 

 hardly be able to find that within the memory of man that even the king's scholars paid above I zd. 

 a quarter till Mr. Battersby's time.' 



This is interesting, as showing what happened almost everywhere with free schools and free 

 scholars, and particularly with cathedral schools. The legal stipend not being increased with the 

 fall in the value of money, the necessary increase had to be made up either, as in the case 

 of Mr. Elias Smith, by pluralities, or by imposing fees under the pretext of payment for fires, 

 lights, rods, and the like, and benevolences in the shape of gratuities. 



The contest resolved into the usual compromise, the chapter ordering 1 that 'if the bishop 

 relinquish all pretensions or tithes to the schoole house on the Palace Green, and to the king's sallarie 

 unto the master of the Grammar School of this church, the Chapter will allow Mr. Peter Nelson, 

 the present schoolmaster there, for his life 10 per annum quarterly, and pay Mr. Rudd 40*. 

 per annum for the school house.' At the same time Rudd's salary was increased 5 a year (durante 

 beneplacito), making 2$ in all, but the organist's salary had been advanced to 50 in 1691. From 

 this time onward both the salary from the exchequer, reduced however by fees of the officials, which 

 the original order totally forbade to be charged, from 8 6s. Sd. to jTj Js. id., and the salary from 

 the bishop's revenues were duly paid to the headmaster of the Grammar School. The crown 

 payment was commuted on 14 February 1888, for a sum of 245 2s. yd. consols vested in the 

 Official Trustees of Charitable Funds, the income of which, now further reduced by reduction of 



1 Chapter Act Book under date 

 382 



