SCHOOLS 



DUNWICH SCHOOL 



Suffolk has the honour of having been the 

 seat of the earliest school the foundation of 

 which is recorded in English history. 'At 

 this time,' says Bede, 1 speaking of about the year 

 631, ' Sigbert presided over the kingdom of the 

 East Saxons. He, while he was in exile in 

 Gaul, seeking refuge from the enmity of Red- 

 wald, received baptism. After his return, as soon 

 as he had obtained the kingdom, wishing to imi- 

 tate what he had seen well done in Gaul, he 

 founded a school in which boys might be taught 

 grammar (instituit sea/am, in qua pueri lltteris 

 erudirentur) with the assistance of Bishop Felix, 

 whom he had received from Kent, who provided 

 them ushers and masters after the fashion of the 

 Kentish men (ehque pedagogos ac magistros juxta 

 rnorem Cantuariorum prebente).' This is a passage 

 of the highest importance in the history of 

 schools, as it shows that the school at Canterbury 

 was an established institution long before the 

 Greek Archbishop Theodore, establishes its claim 

 as the oldest school in England, and irresistibly 

 suggests that it was coeval with Christianity in 

 England, and founded by St. Augustine. The 

 place where the East Anglian school was set up 

 is not stated. But we are told in another place * 

 that Felix had come from Burgundy, where he 

 was born, and was ordained by Archbishop 

 Honorius, who had sent him to preach the word 

 of life to the East Angles, and that he had con- 

 verted the whole nation, 'and had taken (acceplf) 

 his see in the city of Dunwich (Dumnoc),' where 

 eighteen years afterwards he ended his life in 

 peace. It may therefore be safely inferred that 

 the school also was set up in the ecclesiastical 

 capital, just as the chief school of the ' Cantwara ' 

 was at 'Cantwarabyrig,' or Canterbury. 



In 673 the East Anglian see was divided, 

 Norfolk becoming a separate bishopric with its 

 see at Elmham. But we may suppose that the 

 restriction of the labours of the Bishop of Dun- 

 wich to Suffolk only did not lessen the personal 

 interest he took in the grammar school, the 

 maintenance of which was an important part of 

 the episcopal duties. 



Our next glimpse of the school is 500 years 

 later, on the foundation of the priory of Eye, 

 some time after the year 1076, and before 

 1083,' by Robert Malet. Dunwich had then 

 long been deposed from episcopal status, and its 

 younger rival Elmham had also been superseded 



1 Hist. Eccl. iii, 1 8. The Saxon Chronicle gives the 

 date of Felix's mission as 636 ; but, as Mr. Plummer 

 has shown in his edition of Bede (ii, 106), this is five 

 years too late ; and it cannot be earlier than 630, as 

 three years of relapse into paganism had followed Earp- 

 wald's murder in 627 or 628. 



1 Ibid, ii, 15. 



3 i.e. between the date of Robert Malet succeeding 

 his father William and the death of Queen Matilda, 

 who is mentioned as a patroness of his foundation. 



in 1075 in favour of Thetford. Moreover, 

 Dunwich was a manor in secular hands, and of 

 the two carucates of which it consisted, one had 

 been swallowed up by the sea. Nevertheless, 

 while there was only one church there in the 

 time of Edward the Confessor, now there were 

 3, and the burgesses had grown in number from 

 1 20 to 236, besides 178 'poor men.' 



Robert Malet now granted to his new priory 4 

 'all the churches of Dunwich, built or to be built' 

 (no doubt some were then building), ' the tithe of 

 the whole town both of cash and herrings, a fair 

 at St. Leonard's feast for 3 days ; the school also 

 of the same town (scolas ectam eiusdem ville).' 



In 3 other places we have seen the new Nor- 

 man lord transferring to a new Norman founda- 

 tion the government of the school of the town 

 Christchurch (Hampshire), 5 Warwick, and 

 Pontefract while similar transfers will be in 

 evidence incidentally at Bedford, Derby, Glou- 

 cester, and probably elsewhere. The Normans 

 apparently wished to tune the schools as Elizabeth 

 in later times did the pulpits, 6 and take them out 

 of the hands of the secular clergy, who were 

 English, and presumably patriots, and put them 

 in the dead hands of alien orders. At Dunwich, 

 the result of the transfer was to destroy all fur- 

 ther trace of the history of the school. All the 

 registers of Eye have disappeared, though two 

 were known to be in existence as late as 1731. 

 When the priory was dissolved, whatever endow- 

 ments (if any) this school possessed were, as part 

 of the monastic possessions, confiscated, and the 

 school disappeared. Successive inroads of the sea 

 having reduced Dunwich to a village, the grammar 

 school never revived, and we hear of this ancient 

 foundation no more. 



THETFORD SCHOOL 



Thetford, which succeeded in 1075 to the 

 pride of place from which Elmham and Dunwich 

 had fallen, and became the East Anglian see, also 

 furnishes very early evidence of the existence of 

 its school. Under Edward the Confessor there 

 had been 944 burgesses, and though they had 

 fallen at the time of Domesday to 720, it was 

 still one of the great towns. Probably, therefore, 

 it had a school before it became a bishop's see, 

 but in any case, having become a bishop's see, a 

 grammar school would have been attached to it 

 as a matter of course. 



After Thetford was in its turn deposed from 

 episcopal dignity, by Bishop Herbert Losinga in 

 1094 transferring the see to Norwich, the 

 ex-cathedral church of St. Mary was in 1107 

 transmuted by Roger Bigod into a Cluniac priory. 

 But 7 years later the priory was moved to p 



4 Dugdale, Man. iii, 405. 



5 V. C. H. Hants, ii, 1 52 ; Turks, i. 



6 A. F. Leach, Hist, of Warwick School and College, 

 p. 7. 



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