SCHOOLS 



Master or Usher of the said free School, or both of them, in the good 

 discretion of the said Bailiffs and Burgesses for the time being.' The 

 residue, 13 6s. 8d. more thereof, 'was to go to the maintenance of a 

 petty schoolmaster, to be chosen and allowed as aforesaid in Basingstoke 

 aforesaid, who shall teach little children to write and read, but especially 

 to read, and to learn the Catechism in the principles in (sic) religion. And 

 I will and appoint that the lecturer or preacher for the time being shall 

 once in every week come to the school where the children shall be taught 

 and there appose 1 some of them to see how they shall profit therein. And 

 I will that the scholars both of the Free School and of the said Petty 

 School shall be present at every lecture which shall be preached at Basing- 

 stoke aforesaid whereby they may be better instructed.' 



Out of the rest of the profits he made provision for three poor 

 scholars to be appointed by the Skinners' Company who 'shall study 

 divinity in the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge,' 15 each. 



A codicil, sealed 25 April, provided for the purchase by the executors 

 of lands or houses in London to the value of 30 or 40 a year, to be 

 vested in the Skinners' Company to augment the payment to the Basing- 

 stoke poor to 45 a year and add a further poor scholar. 



The will was duly put into execution, and, as far as Basingtoke was 

 concerned, the payment to the corporation was duly made from 1619 

 onwards to the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666. 



The bequest for a ' petty Schoolmaster ' was applied not in the 

 establishment, as was perhaps intended, of a lower department of the 

 grammar school, but of a separate elementary school, 2 which in 1771 

 was described, on the appointment of a new master, as 'the Petty School 

 adjoining the Church of Basingstoke.' The corporation appointed the 

 master, who was always, until 1771, the parish clerk. From very 

 ancient times parish clerks acted as elementary schoolmasters. In 1771 

 the offices of parish clerk and schoolmaster were separated. But the 

 separation, meaning a decrease of stipend, was not a success. From 1 8 1 o 

 the mastership of the Petty School was therefore annexed to that of the 

 Blue Coat Hospital, a small charity school on the Christ's Hospital model, 

 for seven boys founded under a bequest to the corporation of 2,000 by 

 Richard Aldworth in 1 646." The United School served as the principal 

 elementary school of the town until board schools were opened 22 

 February, 1857, when the Petty School and Blue Coat School ceased. 

 The endowments have since been converted into an exhibition fund. 



The Lancaster bequest to the Free or Grammar School effected a 

 considerable change in its management. Until then if there was any 

 lower master or usher he must have been found by and at the expense of 

 the master. No trace of the existence of one has been found in the 

 gild accounts or elsewhere. Oddly enough one does not seem to have 



1 The examiners at Winchester College are still called posers, and the breaking-up day at St. Paul's 

 School, London, is Apposition Day. 

 3 Basingstoke, p. 705. 

 3 Ibid. p. 706. 

 II 377 4 8 



