SCHOOLS 



sallery 13^. 4</.' besides 8 i$s. 4^. salary. This payment is also made in 

 16401. There are no more chapter books or accounts after that year till 

 after the Restoration. It is said l that Widdows was ejected from the master- 

 ship in 1640. If he was ejected, which we may take leave to doubt, it was 

 not until 1642. But the Parliamentarians did not war against schoolmasters, 

 at all events not at that date. It seems probable that Widdows being a 

 Royalist, while Gloucester was the chief and, after the capture of Bristol, 

 almost the sole, upholder of the Parliamentary cause in the west, he betook 

 himself to more congenial surroundings at Woodstock School in the centre of 

 the Royalist power. He afterwards, it is said, became head master at North- 

 leach in Gloucestershire, and died there in possession of the mastership in 

 1655, in the full height of Commonwealth power under the Protectorate 

 strong evidence that Parliament warred not against schoolmasters. 



William Russell, who succeeded in 1642, was a Gloucestershire man 

 from Wickwar. He was educated at Lady Berkeley's Grammar School at 

 Wotton under Edge, and went thence to Lincoln College, 22 January, 

 16356, where he became B.A. 24 October, 1639. He was a master at 

 Sudbury in Suffolk before coming to Gloucester. He held office through the 

 whole period of ' the troubles.' He seems to have been Presbyterian true blue. 



We do not, thanks to the ' fool-fury ' of the zealots of the Restoration, 

 anxious to obliterate the proceedings and especially the good done by the 

 Parliamentary party, know exactly what transpired at Gloucester about the 

 school. But we know in general that the same committees which dealt 

 with 'Scandalous Ministers' and with 'Plundered Ministers' dealt also 

 with schoolmasters. Those committees had power to remove scandalous 

 schoolmasters, and to provide augmentations for the poorest ones out of the 

 estates of delinquents, and of bishops and deans and chapters which were 

 sequestered by ordinance of 3 I March, 1643.* Gloucester however was at 

 first in the middle of the enemy's country, and it was not till 7 November, 

 1645,* that the estates of the dean and chapter of Gloucester were actually 

 ordered to be sequestered and applied. 



We learn from an order made in 1655 by the trustees for the main- 

 tenance of ministers and schoolmasters that by an ordinance of 8 July, 1646, 



the Lords and Commons in Parliament did settle William Russel scholemaster of Grammar 

 schole of the Cathedral Church of Gloucester and ordered him 30 a yeare out of the 

 lands and revenues of the said Deane and chapter 



a very considerable increase on the 19 6s. 8d., which it appears from the 

 same order was ' the ancient stipend payable to the said Schoolmaster by the 

 Deane and Chapter.' He no doubt received this from the sequestrators. 



Deans and chapters were abolished by Act of Parliament on 30 April, 

 1649, but the schools and charities which formed part of the cathedral founda- 

 tions were expressly saved. On 1 8 December following, the City Council 



agreed that Mr. Russell, scholemaster of the Colledgc Schole, shall have paid unto him by 

 the stewards for translating the foundation of the late Deane and Chapter out of Latin into 

 English for the use of the Maior and Burgesses 



4OJ., and Thomas Coll 1 3^. 4//. ' for faire writing the same.' By an ordinance 

 passed 8 June, 1649, all the property of bishops, deans, and chapters which 



1 Foster, Alumni Oxen. ; Wood, Atb. Oxon. iii, 398 ; Bloxam, Magj. Coll. Reg. v, 117. 



* Scoble, Acti and Ordinances, i, 37. ' Commons Journ. iv, 334. 



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