A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



archdeacon of Gloucester. Richard Solloway Skillern, a Bible clerk of All 

 Souls College, was master for twenty years, 1802-22, and vicar of Chipping 

 Norton also for the best part of that time. But the school had sadly fallen. 



Carlisle 1 says of it in 1811, ' As to the school itself, it is now in every 

 sense a Private School the exertions of the Instructor being rewarded by 

 payments from the friends of the Pupils.' But this remark evinces a total 

 misconception of what is meant by a public school, which does not mean a free 

 school but a school under public control, and to which the public generally, 

 and not any particular class, such as clergy or licensed victuallers, are admitted. 



Lord Brougham's Commission of Inquiry into charities found in 1838 

 John Goutter Dowling head master. He had entered on office at Mid- 

 summer, 1827. The largest number of boys he ever had was thirty-three, 

 and at the date of the inquiry there were only twelve. All boys paid tuition 

 fees of eight guineas a year. To W. H. Haviland, who on 15 June, 1830, 

 gave him notice that having a large family he intended to avail himself of 

 the advantage of having two sons taught free by virtue of Dame Joan 

 Cooke's deed, Mr. Dowling replied that he would sooner give up the 

 situation of schoolmaster than receive boys to be educated on the foundation. 

 As the master received only 30 and a house, though the endowment was 

 then worth 600 a year, it is not perhaps * surprising that the school was not 

 free or successful. Under the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, the trustee- 

 ship of charities was taken from corporations and vested in trustees to be 

 named by the Court of Chancery. A body of Municipal Charity Trustees 

 for Bristol was duly appointed on 31 May, 1836. But it was not until 

 7 May, 1844, that, under the presidency of Mr. J. H. Whitcombe, the 

 corporation were required to hand over the management of the Crypt School 

 to the trustees. On 12 December, 1844, the corporation definitely refused. 

 On 5 May, 1 845, they were served with a subpoena to answer to an Informa- 

 tion in Chancery by the Attorney-General at the relation of Thomas Stanley 

 and others. The suit dragged on in the way then usual, till on 13 May, 

 1851, the corporation gave instructions for a compromise. An order was 

 made by the court to carry out this compromise, under which the corporation 

 were to pay up eight years' arrears of rents and hand over the estates to the 

 Municipal Charity Trustees. But before it was carried out a private person 

 claimed a lease of the principal part of the estate at a nominal rent. This 

 was not disposed of till March, 1856, when Vice-Chancellor Stuart dismissed 

 the case of Hope v. Corporation of Gloucester. An appeal to the Lords 

 Justices was taken, but also dismissed. 



Then, in settling the scheme, a struggle began as to the provision of a 

 new site for the school to be bought with the accumulation of rents, some 

 4,100. Eventually the present site of 3 or 4 acres in Southgate Street, 

 known as the Bowling Green, with a house on it in which Mr. James 

 Wintle and the Rev. C. J. Crawley lived, was bought for 5,000, a far larger 

 and better site known as the Barton Street site, which had been previously 

 bought from Mr. Hearne, being rejected because it was not in the ' Crypt 

 Parish.' The Bowling Green site consisted partly of what had been the 

 garden of the Grey Friars (whose manor still stands on the west side of 

 ' Mare Lane ' and partly of what came to be known as the Long Butts. 



1 Carlisle, Endowed Grammar Schools, ii, 452. ' Char. Com. Rtf. xxxii, pt. ii, 643. 



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