SCHOOLS 



HADLEIGH SCHOOL 



The unsuspected antiquity of some schools is 

 evinced by casual gleanings from the most unex- 

 pected quarters. Rash indeed would he be who 

 should boast that Hadleigh School is older than 

 Ipswich School. Yet if the evidence only of ex- 

 lant documents be concerned, we should have to 

 pronounce the former the elder by nearly a cen- 

 tury ; though as the first extant mention of each 

 school shows it as no new creation, but an 

 already going concern, we can, in fact, draw no 

 inference as to the date of their origin, except that 

 it was, in the one case, before 1477, and in the 

 case of Hadleigh, before 1382. 



On 7 May, 1382, six months be it observed 

 before the foundation of Winchester College, 

 William Courtenay, 1 archbishop of Canterbury, 

 in the first year of his translation to that see, in 

 his manor of Croydon, addressed letters under 

 his privy seal to his beloved son, Sir John 

 Catour, priest : 



Having * due regard to the merits of probity and 

 other virtuous gifts with which we have learnt of the 

 evidence of trustworthy persons that you are dis- 

 tinguished we commit to you the teaching and 

 governance of the grammar school of the town of 

 Hadleigh under our immediate jurisdiction to exercise 

 the same and prefer you as master of the same by 

 these presents. 



No earlier or later archbishop has been good 

 enough to record in his register his presentations 

 to this ancient school. So we cannot add the 

 names of any more masters before the Reforma- 

 tion, or indeed, before the Restoration, to that 

 of the Rev. John Catour. But we may safely 

 infer that it was of much older foundation than 

 1382, and that William Courtenay was not by 

 any means the first archbishop to see that the 

 grammar school of his own town of Hadleigh 

 was served by an efficient master. Nor is there 

 any reason to suppose that he was the last, or 

 that the school was at any time suffered to fall 

 into abeyance. 



This school, which Carlisle, in 1818, calls a 

 free grammar school though he does not 

 vouchsafe the least information as to its origin or 

 his authority for the term seems certainly to 

 have survived the Reformation, and enjoyed a 

 continuous life to the nineteenth century. 



Before the days of Queen Elizabeth, John 

 Bois, who matriculated at St. John's, Cambridge, 

 in 1560,' used to walk 4 miles daily when 

 quite a child to attend the school. 



1 Lambeth MSS. Cant. Epis. Reg. Courtenay, 

 fol. 1 06, headed ' Collacio scolarum gramaticalium 

 ville de Haddelegh.' 



s Tibi regimen et gubernacionem scolarum grama- 

 ticalium ville de Haddelegh nostre jurisdiccionis 

 immediate committimus exercendum, teque magistrum 

 tenore presencium preficimus earundem. 



3 Suff. Arch. /;/. iii, I iz. 



Among other scholars of this school who have 

 been heard of, were William Alabaster, author 

 of Roxana and the unlucky prisoner, first of 

 Whitgift, and (after his conversion to Roman- 

 ism) of the Inquisition ; John Overall, one of the 

 Hampton Court Conference divines, and bishop 

 of the diocese of Norwich ; Joseph Beaumont, 

 author of Psyche, and master of Peterhouse, 

 Cambridge. 



William Hawkins who from 1622 to 1626 

 held this post during the interval between his 

 B.A. and M.A. graduations, and was later on 

 curate of the parish was a poet whom Milton 

 is supposed to have honoured by plagiarizing. 4 

 The boys acted his Apollo Skroving, as well as 

 the dialogue Pestifugium, which was performed 

 before Cambridge runaways from the plague in 

 1630. 



In 1626, Mr. William Avis, M.A., succeeded 

 him and was master until his death in i64i, 6 

 when Mr. Atkinson 6 followed. His having one 

 of the Grahams, of Netherby, in Cumberland, 

 as a pupil shows that the school then still enjoyed 

 a high repute. 



In 1655, the only discoverable endowment of 

 the school, namely jiOO, was given by Elias 

 Jordayn. 7 



In 1667, the master is found asserting himself 

 and obtaining an injunction ordering the teacher 

 of Alabaster's Elementary School ' not to meddle 

 with or claim any stipend paid to the teacher of 

 the Grammar School in Hadleigh.' 8 



Up to the latter part of the eighteenth century 

 a boy was occasionally sent to the university 

 from the school. But in 1818 it was 'enjoyed 

 by the lower classes of Humanity ;' 9 and the 

 Commissioners of Inquiry concerning Charities 

 report in 1840 that it was 'kept in a house or 

 building in the Churchyard, but it has long been 

 discontinued.' 10 



IPSWICH SCHOOL 



Ipswich, which had a gild merchant in the 

 days of King John, probably had a grammar 

 school in days equally early. But the first men- 

 tion of one yet discovered is in an order by the 

 General Court of the Borough on Monday 

 before Lady Day, 14767, hitherto known only 

 in a late and, as it now transpires, inaccurate 

 translation in a book called Bacon's Book, a 

 collection of extracts from the corporation 

 minute books made by Nathaniel Bacon, recorder 

 and town clerk, temp. Charles I, printed in 



4 Paradise Lost, viii, 40-7. 

 4 Reg. of Burials. 



l \Reg. of St. John's College, Camb. He was probably 

 assistant in the school a little earlier. 

 7 Char. Com. Rep. xx, 507. 

 > Ibid. xx. 



' Carlisle, Endowed Grammar Schools, ii. 

 10 Char. Com. Rep. xx. 



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