A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



It is nearly a hundred years later than that mention of the scholars fed 

 in Gaunt's Hospital that in the dearth of documents we come across another 

 indication of the Grammar School. 



On 30 March, I353, 1 on the election of a new abbot of St. Augustine's, 

 William Cok, the usual examination of witnesses as to age and character took 

 place, when William Hull, of the age of forty years and more gave evidence 

 that ' from childhood he had been a companion and friend of the said elect 

 at school and elsewhere (" ab infancia socius et sodalis dicti electi in scolis et 

 alibi ") and therefore well knew his age.' 



In the one monastic account of St. Augustine's Abbey quoted by 

 Britton, that for 14912, which has been reasonably conjectured 3 to have 

 been made up for and produced to the bishop on his visitation in 1493, 

 Henry Burgges, collector of rents in Bristol, accounts for 1 3^. 4^. ' to John 

 Griffith, vicar of St. Augustine the Less, for teaching the junior canons and 

 other boys in the grammar school in the abbey ; and 13^. 4^. to him for his 

 diet.' But this appears to refer to an almonry school. A record of the end 

 of the fifteenth or early part of the sixteenth century, however, introduces us 

 to renewed evidence of the public grammar school. A dispute one of 

 many similar disputes about this time between the abbey and the town 

 had arisen about some abbey choristers s who refused to pay ' the king's 

 silver,' their goods were distrained upon by the town officers; the abbot 

 arrested the distraining officers for trespass on his jurisdiction, abbey 

 retainers were in turn imprisoned in the town prison called Newgate, 

 which the abbot and his men attempted to force, but were repulsed. In 

 the end the town officers were declared to be in the right, and the abbot and 

 his successors were ordered on every Easter Sunday in the afternoon, and 

 every Easter Monday in the afternoon, to meet the mayor and corpora- 

 tion ' at the door of the grammar school at Frome Gate,' and accompany 

 them to St. Augustine's, where, according to custom, they went to attend 

 service in state. 



This inference that the school was then held in Frome Gate is confirmed 

 by the earliest of the corporation accounts now in existence, the mayor's 

 audit book for the year 1532. It begins ' A Rentall of all landis and tene- 

 ments belonging to the Chamber of the Towne of Bristoll renewyd by 

 William Nashe, chamberlayn ; Mr. Thomas Pacy then beyng maire/ 

 Under the heading of ' Chrystynmasse streatt alias Knyfsmythstreate,' are the 

 entries, 'a tenement under the scole howse in the tenure of William Whiting 

 the yonger, 4-r. A tenement over Frome Yate, which the Scolemaster of the 

 Gramer hath rente free for the techyng of chyldyrn 36^. 8^/.' Next year 

 this item appears as 'a tenement in the tenure of Thomas MofFatt scolemaster, 

 2OJ. A tenement over Frome Yate which the Scolemaster hathe rente free 

 for the techyng of childern 26s. 8</.' 



1 Wore. Sede vacante Reg. fol. 1 08 d. 



3 Bristol Past and Present ii, 64, from Britton's Cathedral Antlq . (1833). I have been unable to ascertain 

 whether this document perished in the fire during the riots of 1832, and cannot therefore verify the words 

 above. I doubt the phrase 'junior canons and other boys' being correct. 



8 Britton, Cathedral Antlq. v, 22. This incident is quoted from 'an MS. calendar penes William Tyson,' 

 said to be related under the time of Abbot Somerset, 1526-33, but to have referred to the time of Abbot 

 Newland, who died in 1497. In Bristol Past and Present, ii, 64, it is confused with what was apparently a 

 totally different incident connected with the election of Abbot Eliot in 1515, which Richard Fox, then bishop 

 of Winchester, referred to Wolsey. 



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