A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



Mr. S. Elford, M.A., retired in 1903. Under Mr. Arthur Cecil Kelway, 

 M.A., from Somerset County School and Queens' College, Cambridge, 

 appointed April, 1903, and four resident assistant masters, there are now 

 over i oo boys, of whom 1 2 are boarders. Such have been the good results 

 of a scheme. 



WOTTON UNDER EDGE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 



The foundation of Wotton under Edge Grammar School is an interesting 

 one in that it is the first we know of as being founded not by a successful 

 cleric or merchant, but by a lady, and that as early as 1384. The lady was 

 of high rank, Katherine daughter of Sir John of Clivedon, knt., and Emma 

 his wife, and was married first to Sir Peter of Vele, and afterwards, 30 May, 

 1347, as his second wife, to Thomas, third Lord Berkeley, ' and was fruitful,' 

 says the family chronicler, ' to her husband both in lands and children.' 

 Lord Berkeley died in 1361, but she survived him 24 years, and it was 

 not till nearly the end of her life that she founded the school. The original 

 foundation deed is no longer to be found in its proper home, the school. 

 But the whole process of the foundation, and the statutes or regulations of 

 the school, have fortunately been preserved in a transcript in the Worcester 

 Episcopal Registers. 



The date of the foundation of Wotton under Edge School has been 

 variously given hitherto as 1382 * and 1385,* but it belongs in fact to the year 

 1384. On 1 6 June, 1384, for 20 fine paid by Walter Burnell and William 

 Pendok, chaplains, King Richard II, 3 reciting the statute of mortmain, granted 

 them dispensation from it and licence 'to erect a schoolhouse (domum scolarum) 

 in a certain place in Wotton underege for the habitation or foundation 

 of a master and 2 poor scholars of the art of grammar, the master and his 

 successors to teach and inform all scholars coming to the same house, taking 

 nothing for his labour from them or any of them.' In other words it was to 

 be a free grammar school. Licence was also given to grant certain property 

 specified for their support. A licence in similar terms was granted by 

 Thomas, then Lord Berkeley, as immediate lord of Wotton, on i July, 1384. 

 Then on 20 October, 1384, Katerina, or Kitherina as the register calls her, 

 ' who was wife of Sir Thomas of Berkeley, lord of Berkeley,' with the two 

 chaplains, her agents and trustees, executed the foundation deed, which reads 

 very much like an echo of the foundation deed of Winchester College executed 

 by William of Wykeham two years before, though probably both are derived 

 from earlier examples. 



We the said Katherine attentively considering that the purpose of many desiring to be 

 informed in grammar, which is the foundation of all the liberal arts, is daily defeated and 

 frustrated by poverty and want of means ; therefore for the maintenance and exaltation of 

 holy mother church, and the increase of divine worship and other liberal arts and sciences, 

 out of the goods bestowed upon us by God have procured the said Walter and William to 

 acquire certain lands and tenements in fee, that they may newly build a school house in 



1 Sch. Inq. Rep. xv, 125. 



' Char, Com. Rep. xvii, 34.. Carlisle, End. Gram. Schools, i, 408. The discrepancy is due to the usual 

 error of identifying the almanack year with the regnal year. The whole process was done between 16 June, 

 7 Ric. II, and 20 October, 8 Ric. II, both of which fall in A.D. 1384, that king's accession having been on 

 22 June, 1384.. 



3 Pat. 7 Ric. II, pt. ii, m. 3 ; and Cal. Itiq. p.m. iii, 64, Nos. 123 and 124. 



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