SCHOOLS 



pp.ity. Smart was called up before the High Commission Court and sent to be tried at York, 

 convicted, fined £soo, deprived of his prebend and his living, and on refusal to apologise consigned 

 to prison and kept for ten whole years until released by the Long Parliament, who, 22 January, 

 1 64 1, declared his sentence illegal and void. 



Smart's successor in the headmastership in 1609, Thomas John Inglcthorp, or Ingmelthorp, 

 seems to have been a man of like kidney. He was of Hraseiiose College, Oxford, where he took no 

 degree, but w.-is reputed a good Hebrew scholar. In 1594 he became rector of Stainton, Durham. 

 In 16 10 he was appointed headmaster of Durham school. On 9 July, 161 2, he was brought 

 up before the chapter for a ' biting invective in a sermon ' against Ralph Tunstall, one of the 

 canons, who had been one of Queen Mary's chaplains in bygone times. An injunction was 

 issued against his preaching ; he was ordered to resign the mastership within a month and give up 

 the living of Stainton which he held. He was also kept in gaol nearly a wliole year, until he made 

 a humble submission on 13 June, 1613.^ At Christmas he retired to Stainton, where he kept a 

 small private school often or twelve boys, and was buried there I November, 1638. 



Nicholas Walton followed. Of him it is recorded that (presumably as a king's scholar) he had 

 made a Latin speech to King James on his entry to Durham, on his way to take possession of the 

 throne of England. He seems to have succeeded in holding his place for 15 years, retiring at 

 Christmas in 1628 to the living of Croxdalc, where he died April, 1639. The usher, George 

 Cocknidgc, who in 1613 became also cpistoler of the cathedral, retired. 



Thomas Miller, a Kentish man, of Balliol College, Oxford, was the next headmaster. He had 

 William Vipont or Vipound, an ex-chorister and king's scholar of the school, for his under-master. 

 He was the hero of the following rh)me by James Smart, a lay clerk : — 



The ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth October, 

 Mr. Miller was drunk and never was sober. ^ 



His reign, possibly on account of the propensity thus sung, was short, for he left the school at Christmas, 

 1632, receiving from the treasurer, ' which was give him for his vale, jTio.'s 



Richard Smelt, M.aster of Darlington Grammar School, then came in. The school flourished 

 under him, about two boys a year from this school going up in his time to St. John's College, Cam- 

 bridge, alone.* Among them were William Lamblon, son of Sir W. Lambton, Knt., of Biddicke, of 

 the family of the present earls of Durham ; Matthew, son of T. Robinson, Knt.,ofRokeby, of the family 

 of the present marquises of Ripon, who went up as fellow commoners ; while, side by side with them, 

 were John Ladler, son of a butcher, admitted a sizar, and John Sisson, who went as sizar to his 

 contemporary, Lambton. The only one known to fame, however, is John Hall, admitted a pensioner 

 26 February, and a fellow commoner 15 April, 1646, son of Michael Hall, of Consett. He had 

 apparently been previously at Gray's Inn, 7 June, 1643, and returned there after a yearat Cambridge, 

 having fluttered the University dovecote with some essays called ' Horas Vaciva.' He was an 

 Independent and Republican. In 1648 he wrote a satire on the Presbytery, and in 1649 ' a humble 

 motion to the Parliament . . . concerning the . . . reformation of the Universities.' 



The school, Langley's school, on the Palace Green, and the master's house at the north end 

 of it having been burnt down by tlie Scots in their inroad in 1640, Smelt retired on I May, 1640, 

 to the living of Easingwold. 



Elias Smith, the next master, who came in i May, 1640, had a long and chequered career. 

 He had been for some years a minor canon (admitted 13 July, 1628), gospeller and sacrist of the 

 cathedral, and also chaplain of St. Mary Magdalen's Church, and of the chantry over the abbey gate, 

 now called the Treasury, and so curator of the cathedral library there kept. John Mickleton, the 

 collector of Durham history, tells us that Elias Smith had the honour of teaching him, and that owing 

 to the destruction of the school house Smith taught the school where he could, sometimes in the third 

 prebendary's house by the Guest Hall, sometimes in the first prebendary's house. On 15 August, 

 1643, the chapter presented him to the vicarage of Bedlington, in Northumberland, and he 'is to 

 relinquish his augmentation of ^^5 per annum in his church ' (the minor canons' stipends had been 

 increased from £6 i^s. ^d. to £^1 1 1 3;. ^d.), ' and the school and gospeller's place at May Day, and 

 St. Mary Magdalen's at Midsummer next coming.' 



Apparently he was succeeded by Lancelot Dobson,^ whom Mickleton represents as a ' substituted 

 headmaster,' in what he is pleased to call 'the most wicked times,' meaning that he was put in by 

 the Parliamentarians, and there 'officiated for two or three years, with William Hanby under him.' 

 Then came 'Samuel Bolton, of Christ's College, Cambridge, who afterwards married Sarah, one of 

 the daughters of the said Elias. And John Ward, clerk, was another substituted preceptor, who was 

 also vicar of Elvet, and for a short time officiated under the same Elias before the coming of Thomas 



1 Wood, Athen. Oxon. i. 210 ; W. H. D. LangstafFe, History of DarHnglon, p. 222, 1854. 



* Micklcton's MSS. * Account at end of the Treasurer's Book for the year. 



* Admissions to the College of St. John the Evangelist, ed. J. E. 13. Mayor, 18S2. ' Mickleton, p. 61. 



379 



