SCHOOLS 



ment of the master and usher was not vested in this special school cor- 

 poration but in the general town corporation, the mayor, bailiffs and 

 burgesses, who with the advice of the Bishop of Winchester were given 

 the power of making statutes for the school, choosing the masters and 

 having ' the government and disposition of the rents and revenues 

 appointed and to be appointed for the support of the same.' 



The school started in 1554 under the headmastership of Robert 

 Knaplocke * of Gillingham, Dorset, a scholar of Winchester College in 

 1539, who returned from his fellowship at New College, Oxford, to be 

 hostiarius (usher or second master) of the college in 1551, and so 

 remained till his appointment at Southampton. The salary of the head- 

 master at Southampton was >C IQ a y ear with 3 6j. Sd. for board. The 

 usher at Winchester only got 6 3*. Sd. and board. Knaplocke retired 

 in 1561, and is apparently the Robert Knaplocke who was town clerk 

 of Southampton in 1563 and mayor in 1575. 2 In 1561 the town council 

 settled the fees payable in the school at 6d. a quarter for town boys 

 and 1 6d. for country boys, ' after the order of Winchester.' 



The status of the school was apparently well maintained, as 

 another Winchester scholar and fellow of New College, Isaac Bathe, 

 who had been second master of Winchester College from 1582, became 

 headmaster in 1596. A greater name of the same kind was that of 

 William Twisse or Twiste, scholar of Winchester in 1590, and of New 

 College in 1597, who was headmaster from 1611 to 1616. He became 

 rector of Newbury, was a sturdy Puritan and famous as the Prolocutor 

 of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster during the ascendency of 

 Parliament. Thomas Wareham, who was headmaster for no less than 

 thirty years, during the whole of the stormy period of the Civil War, 

 1624 to 1654, was another Winchester scholar. 



Southampton being too much of a Parliamentary stronghold to be 

 even attacked, its school went on throughout untroubled. Another 

 Wykehamist, Thomas Butler, who was rector of Milbrook in 1656, and 

 probably usher, succeeded to the headmastership in 1660. He became 

 vicar of St. Michael's, and in 1675 was removed from the mastership for 

 neglect, preferring no doubt the lighter clerical to the more onerous 

 scholastic duties. It was perhaps owing to his delinquencies that on 

 ii February, 1674-5, statutes were made for the school by the town 

 council, with the approval of George Morley, Bishop of Winchester. 

 The fees were now largely increased. There was an entrance fee of 

 5-r. to the master, 2s. 6d. to the usher and 6d. each to two pr -expositor /, 

 one of them a prefect of school, ' to watch them at church and out of 

 school.' ' Instead of the gratuities which heretofore used to be paid at 

 breaking up,' a quarterly fee of 5^. was to be paid to those under the 



1 In Kirby's Scholars his name is mis-read Knaplode and his birthplace Fillingham. The place is 

 fixed by one William Knaplocke holding land of St. Katharine's Chantry in Gillingham granted to 

 Sherborne School and was named one of its first governors in 1550 ('Sherborne School,' Arch. Journ. 

 1898). 



a Davies' Southampton, pp. 311, 187, 295. 



389 



