A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



' Podidasculum,' 1 somebody's mistake for hipodidasculum, or usher, received a 

 salary of 10 a year. 



We may be sure that these are not all the schools that existed before the 

 Reformation ; but that there are many more which have no memorial, and 

 are perished as though they had never been. No doubt some of the schools 

 founded after the Reformation, such as Northleach in 1559, Tewkesbury in 

 1609, Tetbury in 1610, Thornbury in 1642, and Wickwar in 1683, like 

 that of Chipping Sodbury, confirmed by a decree of Commissioners of 

 Charitable Uses 4 September, 1694,* but mixed up with the gild and church 

 lands of the borough, and now in abeyance, were really resuscitations or 

 fresh endowments of pre-existing schools. 



Of elementary schools before the Reformation we have scant traces. 

 We see the Song School at Winchcombe ; and the curious provision at 

 St. Nicholas, Bristol, 3 in 1481, that 



the clerke aught not to take no boke oute of the quere for chulderyn to lerne in withowte 

 license of the procurators [i.e. the churchwardens] undyr payne that the curate and pro- 

 curators assign he. 



But these two incidental references show the two main sources of provision 

 for elementary schools in ancient days the chantry priest, who taught the 

 Song School ; and, when there was none, the parish clerk, who, it should be 

 remembered, was a literate and cleric of very much higher status than the 

 later bearers of the title, and taught reading and elementary grammar out of 

 the choir books. 



The earliest post-Reformation endowment now forthcoming actually for 

 elementary education, ' writing and ciphering,' was at Wotton under Edge in 

 1630. But only four more are in evidence before the eighteenth century. 



GLOUCESTER SCHOOLS 



THE COLLEGE SCHOOL, GLOUCESTER 



The College School, otherwise the King's School, otherwise the 

 Cathedral Grammar School, Gloucester, may claim a high antiquity ; a 

 great deal higher than that attributed to it by Nicholas Carlisle* of ' being 

 coeval with the abbey,' meaning St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, now the 

 cathedral church. This abbey is said to have been originally founded about 

 68 1, 5 as a nunnery. 6 It was afterwards a college of secular canons till the 

 time of Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, who ousted the clerks for monks 

 and introduced the Benedictine rule in IO22. 7 It is probably owing to the 



1 Valor Eccl. ii, 435. * Char. Com. Rep. xvn, 372. 



s Clifton Antiquarian Club Proc. (1886), i, 148. * Endowed Grammar Schools, i, 449. 



6 Hist. Mon. Glouc. (Rolls Ser.), i, 14. 



6 A similar tale is told of Carlisle and other places. The main object of such stories was to try to give a 

 title to possessions, or more often claims to possessions, which could not otherwise be substantiated. 



7 Hist. Mon. Glouc. (Rolls Ser.), i, 8. The monkish writer says : 'The beauty of religion (speciositas 

 religionis) in the minster of Gloucester was miraculously continued, after the transfer of the sisters existing 

 there flying hither and thither, under secular power till the time of Bishop Wolstan in 1002, who in 1022 

 placed the clerks who had hitherto governed and kept St. Peter's church under the protection of God and 

 the Apostles Peter and Paul and the rule of Blessed Benedict, and consecrated one Edric abbot.' 



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