SCHOOLS 



dispossession of the secular canons by the monks that when we first meet 

 with Gloucester School in historical documents we find it under the tutelage 

 not of the monastery of St. Peter, but of the canons of Llanthony Abbey, 

 just outside the ancient city. The order or rule of the regular or Augus- 

 tinian or black canons, who inhabited Llanthony, was intermediate between 

 that of the monks, who were, theoretically, wholly immured in their cloister, 

 and that of the secular clergy, who were wholly immersed in the world ; for 

 though bound by the threefold rule of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and 

 supposed to live the common life in a common cloister and a common dormi- 

 tory, the Augustinian canons, unlike monks, were allowed to hold vicarages 

 and to move about to some extent in the world. Hence they were in 

 many places recognized as not improper persons to be entrusted with the 

 governance of public schools. 



The first extant mention of the school is in a charter 1 of the first year 

 of King John, 30 July, 1 199. It is addressed to the church of St. Mary and 

 St. John the Baptist and the regular canons of Llanthony, and witnesses that 

 the king had ' granted and confirmed to the said church the donations which 

 have been reasonably (rationabiliter) made to them of the gift of Henry our 

 father ; the chapel in the castle of Gloucester (capellam infra * castellum 

 G/oucestrie) and a school in the same town (et unam sco/am in eadem villa] 

 and half the fishery in Hersepol, which is of our demesne.' The recital and 

 confirmation of other lands and grants made by other people follow, while 

 the canons were to be ' quit of shire, hundred, &c. as our brother Richard's 

 charter testifies.' The chapel in the castle is said in a deed of Miles, 8 con- 

 stable of Gloucester, to have been given by his father Roger to the church 

 of St. Owen, which he (Miles) gave to Llanthony in 1137, when the abbey 

 church was dedicated. The school, therefore, existed before the founda- 

 tion of Llanthony Abbey, under the government of the canons or chaplains 

 of the castle chapel, probably a collegiate foundation like the similar chapels 

 in Windsor Castle, the Tower of London, Pontefract Castle, Oxford Castle, 

 Warwick Castle (the last three of which are known to have included schools 

 as part of their foundation), and elsewhere. 



The school was not, therefore, a monastic school in the sense of a 

 school founded by or kept in a monastery for monks or by monks, or 

 ' regulars ' of any kind. All that was granted to the priory was the advow- 

 son or right of presentation or collation, as it was called ; for a school- 

 mastership was looked upon as a form of ecclesiastical benefice, and was 

 under ecclesiastical law, and so, often spoken of in the terms appropriate to 

 ecclesiastical appointments; indeed, 'rector' was a common alias for 'master,' 

 and is still in use in Scotland, while the Rectors of Exeter and Lincoln 

 Colleges at Oxford still show that the title was used in England. There is 

 no evidence that the priory had to find, or did find, any endowment for the 

 master. All they had to do with the school was to appoint and license the 

 master to teach, perhaps to remove him on occasion, though of that we 

 have no instance, and perhaps, though of that there is no evidence, to 

 find a schoolhouse. Even their right of patronage was continually being 



1 Rot. Chart. (Rec. Com.), John, 7. 



' In Dugdale, Man. vi, 137, this is given ttjuxta, i.e. by the castle. 



Ibid. 136. 



3'5 



