SCHOOLS 



the Reformation movement then prevailing, if the law and the Lord Chief 

 Justice had not been too strong for them. But they were. Education was 

 recognized as a matter not for the common law courts at all, but for the 

 ecclesiastical courts, and in the ecclesiastical courts the control of the ordinary in 

 restraint of free trade in school-keeping was well established. The ecclesiastical 

 law was, however, just as much a part of the law of England as the common law. 



Whether the Gloucester schoolmasters having failed at common law 

 then resorted to the spiritual court to put down their rivalry, and why they 

 ever came to the common law court when the spiritual courts were open to 

 them and had shown their efficacy in the matter only thirty years before, 

 we are, in the usual tantalizing way of these records, left guessing. 



The school must have been of very considerable status and repute in 

 1424, when 1 Mr. Richard Davy, master of Gloucester Grammar School, 

 was especially invited to Winchester College on a vacancy in the head-master- 

 ship, and received 6s. %d. for himself for his trouble, with is. for his clerk. 

 A large field was got together, masters being sought from Maidstone, 

 Oxford, and St. Albans. Davy was the only one who actually came to Win- 

 chester, apparently as a selected candidate, except Thomas Walewayn or 

 Alwin from Newport Pagnell, who was elected, and probably owed his victory 

 over Davy chiefly to being an old Wykehamist. It is a strong tribute to 

 Davy's merits that, with the possible exception of William Waynflete, the 

 next head master, no one not a Wykehamist was ever again in the running 

 for the head-mastership till Dr. Burge was elected in 1901. 



Once more, on 26 January, 151213, Bishop Silvester's locum tenens, 

 Dr. Hanibal, had, as we said above, to reassert the rights of Llanthony Abbey 

 over the school against fresh assailants. After reciting Bishop Giffard's com- 

 mission and its results on Bishop Wakefield's confirmation in 1380, he proceeds 



We, treading in the steps of such mighty fathers and putting before our eyes letters, 

 privileges, charters and instruments, confirmed not only by the Apostolic see, but by 

 the most serene kings of England, confirm them by our authority as ordinary, and 

 because it has come to our ears that lately new kinds of contention have arisen concerning 

 the school (scolarum) in the borough of Gloucester through certain persons claiming the right 

 of collation under the vice of usurpation, against the aforesaid recognised right, and they 

 endeavour to appoint schoolmasters and scholars in the same borough ; for the appeasement 

 of which contentions and controversies we caused all pretending an interest in the matter to 

 be summoned for a certain day and place before us ; at which no one appearing or alleging 

 any interest except the said Prior and Convent by their proctors, brother Robert Conde, 

 cellarer of the monastery, and Mr. Robert Stynchrobe ' (? Stinkrobe), 



therefore the Official directed the archdeacon to cause to be proclaimed on 

 three Sundays in all the parish churches of Gloucester and the neighbourhood 



a public inhibition * against anyone calling himself a scholar keeping any school for learning 

 or sending anyone not of mature age to such schools, except those schools or school the 

 teaching of which has been freely (gratuita) granted by the Prior and convent of Llanthony 

 to a fit master. 



1 Win. Coll. Bursars' Roll. ' In datis Magistro Ricardo Davy, magistro gramaticalium scolarum Glou- 

 cestrie, venienti ad Collegium ut idem Ricardus esset informator scolarium collegii 6s. SJ. et in datis clerico uo 

 I/.' By an unfortunate error, due apparently to some notion that the so-called schools of the Jews were really 

 public schools, an extract from this entry appeared in Mr. T. Kirby's Ann. of Win. Coll. 188 as 'scolarum 

 giudicalium.' Mr. Kirby, however, informs me, and I have confirmed it by inspection, that the original entry 

 is as given above. 



' Publicc inhibcre ne quis pro scolari se gerens scolas aliquas discendi gracia exerceat, aut juvenem qui ad 

 maturam etatem non provenerit scolis aliquibus tradat, ni-i illis aut illi dumtaxat, quarum regimen Magistro 

 ydoneo ex dictorum Prioris et conventus de Lanthon collacione gratuita est concessum. 



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