A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



appointed to examine witnesses, who opened negotiations with the corpora- 

 tion for a compromise, to which they assented, 



being moved with the remembrance of manifold good deeds and acts ot charity done by the 

 ancestors of the said Alice Pykes unto and within the said city .... and also weighing 

 what valuable consideration in other lands she had departed with to her sisters, and viewing 

 her great charge, having seven daughters to provide for. 



She retained the property, paying 41 6s. 8d. a year rent instead of 30 a 

 year, including the cost of repairs to the school, estimated at i 6s. %d. a year. 

 Lord Chancellor Ellesmere accordingly made a decree sanctioning this 

 arrangement on 10 May, 1610, and giving the schoolmaster 26 i%s. ^d. 

 a year and the usher 13 6s. 8*/., a third more than they got before. 



The decree also confirmed the rights of the mayors to act as ' special 

 governors of the school as in times past,' and 



that they should yearly visit the said school and choose overseers thereof .... and should 

 with the advice of the aldermen and common counsil as often as they should see occasion 

 displace and place the schoolmaster and usher of the said school .... freely without any 

 reward taken therefore and .... make such orders and rules for the bringing up and educa- 

 tion of youth there in grammar and other good learning as they should see fit so as they were 

 not repugnant to the laws ordinances rule and government set down by the founders. 



No sooner had Mrs. Pykes got this extremely favourable compromise than 

 she began selling more of the lands : and in 1613 this poor widow, in spite 

 of her seven daughters, was able to buy up her sisters' charges of i 1 a year 

 on the lands. She also granted no less than 44 new leases, no doubt taking 

 large fines, at small quit-rents. It was perhaps to stop further alienations that 

 on 26 September, 1616, the corporation resolved to offer 500 to Mr. 

 Nicholas Pykes, her son, for the Bartholomew lands ; ' and eventually bought 

 them for 650. They were accordingly conveyed by Alice Pykes by deed 

 of 7 June, 1617, to John Whitson and three other aldermen and their heirs, 

 they paying 41 rent to the school. Finally they came home again to 

 the corporation by a conveyance by the two surviving aldermen trustees, 

 12 April, 1621. 



From September, 1617, the accounts of the Bartholomew lands were 

 kept by a separate bailiff in a separate book. After 1630, up to which date 

 fines and ' overplus ' in respect of the lands were entered, no payments in 

 respect of them appear in the mayor's audit books. In spite of the somewhat 

 ambiguous terms of the conveyance by Mrs. Pykes, the whole income of the 

 lands was applied to the school. 



The master throughout these troublous times, from 1597 to 1622, 

 appears to have been William Swift, a Gloucestershire boy, who matriculated 

 at Christ Church, Oxford, 2 July, 1585, aged 18, and took his M.A. degree 

 there 7 February, 1589-90. On his death in 1622 the chamberlain and 

 Mr. Barker and his men went ' on a journey to Oxford, being out 5 days, to 

 provide a schoolmaster for the Grammar Schoole, all charges amounteth 

 as by the particulars appeareth to 4 5-f. 5^.' 



On 22 June, 1622, the Council Book records : 



This day Mr. Payne, master of arts, commended by the vice-chancellor of Oxford to 

 Mr. Mayor, aldermen and common council of this city to succeed Mr. William Swift deceased, 

 late schoolmaster of the Free Grammar School .... is elected and chosen chief school- 

 master .... with the yearly pension of 40 marks formerly given .... with such other 



370 



