A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



chancels of the churches, but extraordinary burdens were to be borne by 

 the priory and vicar, ' each discharging their portion ; saving this, that 

 the Prior of Selborne shall competently maintain the chapel of the Holy 

 Ghost.' This chapel then was already well established before 1244, or 

 presumably 1234, and its chaplain was no doubt the chaplain referred to, 

 who, under the control of the vicar, celebrated for the dead, ' as was 

 usual in times past.' 



Yet there is not extant a scrap of evidence to prove the existence 

 of the gild earlier than 1480, when a rental of Basingstoke, still in 

 the possession of the Corporation, 1 shows ' the Wardens of the Holy 

 Ghost' paying rent. Even that entry might conceivably refer simply 

 to chapel wardens, and not necessarily imply that there was a gild. 

 In fact it is only from the recital in Henry VIII. 's licence in mort- 

 main that we know positively that the gild had long existed. 



In 1 548 the chapel itself and the gild with its possessions were confis- 

 cated as superstitious under the Chantries Act " of 1 547. The Brother- 

 hood of the Holy Ghost therefore ceased, and its possessions passed to the 

 Crown. The school appears to have ceased also. The Act indeed con- 

 tained a provision for the continuance of grammar schools, but apparently 

 only for those which were specifically part of the original foundation. 

 ' The Commissioners,' it said, ' shall appoint in every place where a gild 

 or fraternity, or the priest or incumbent of any chantry, by the foundation, 

 ordinance or the first institution thereof, should or ought to have kept a 

 Grammar School, and has done so, since Michaelmas, i 547, lands, tenements 

 and other hereditaments of any such chantry to remain and continue in 

 succession to a School Master for ever, for and towards the keeping of a 

 Grammar School.' The return made to the commissioners, as we have 

 seen, only showed that a grammar school had been kept for ten years past, 

 and did not assert that it was of the foundation or first institution. There- 

 fore, in odd contradiction to the preamble which held out a promise of 

 converting chantries not theretofore used for schools into schools, the Act 

 swept away those that were already used as schools, if such user was not 

 in accordance with the original foundation. 



In 1557 the school was re-founded, and by a provision which is 

 probably unique the gild was re-founded with it. In the re-foundations 

 of Edward VI., as for example at Stratford-on-Avon and Saffron Walden, 

 the schools formerly maintained by a fraternity or brotherhood were now 

 placed under the government of the town corporation, which took the 

 place of the extinct gild. In other places, as at Louth, where a gild had 

 formerly maintained the school, a special body of governors was created 

 to govern the goods, possessions and revenues of the resuscitated school. 

 The revival at Basingstoke is significant of the attempt then being made 



1 Basingstoke, p. 380. 



* Mr. Baigent speaks of the gild ' founded by license from Henry VIII. himself, escaping the opera- 

 tion of the Act passed in the thirty-seventh year of his reign for the suppression of such institutions.' 

 It was however included in the Act, which was permissive, and allowed the king to enter on what he 

 chose during his life. As he died within a few months after it came into operation it wai acted on in a 

 very small number of cases, of which the Basingstoke gild was not one. 



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