106 THE EXTERNAL GROWTH OF SHERBORNE SCHOOL. 



derived ; and in the window which we placed in our Library in 

 1887, as a memorial of Her Majesty's Jubilee, we have ventured 

 to presume upon this strong probability, as though it were actual 

 history. Our Charter, owing to the care with which for more than 

 300 years it was stowed away among the muniments of the Alms- 

 house, is in singularly good preservation, and bears date May 13th, 

 1550. This gives us precedence over the School founded by 

 Edward Vlth at Bury St. Edmunds, which obtained its Charter in 

 August of the same year, and that of Bruton, which was founded a 

 few months later. We speak of the School as re-founded by 

 Edward VI. The acts of the preceding reign had swept away 

 the free schools of the Monasteries, together with the wealthy 

 foundations which supported them ; and to the serious evil, which 

 had resulted from the destruction of the Abbey School at Slier- 

 borne, may be traced, if not the plan, at least the first step in 

 carrying out the plan, for utilizing the endowments of such religious 

 houses and Chantries as still survived the general wreck, for the 

 establishment of Grammar Schools, where the principles of the 

 reformed faith might be engrafted upon young minds, which as yet 

 had no prejudice of their own against them, and loyalty to the 

 Throne might be inculcated untrammelled by monastic influence. 

 But of the School of pre-Edwardian times we have no records 

 beyond the mention of a ruined " Schole-house," which, at the 

 date when the letters patent were granted constituting the new 

 School, was in the possession of Sir John Horsey, Kt., the lay 

 impropriator of the dissolved Monastery, and the grotesquely 

 carved miserere in the Choir of the Abbey Church, which proves 

 that, whatever may have been the quality of the education im- 

 parted, the method of its inculcation was at least drastic. It is a 

 common error to suppose that the Monastery Schools suppressed at 

 the dissolution were conducted by the Monks themselves. The 

 garb of the Scholemaster represented in the miserere is that of a 

 secular, and, as a matter of fact, the relation of the Monasteries to 

 the Schools supported by them was at this time, and had been for a 

 considerable period, that of beneficent landlords employing seculars 



