A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



rents and farms per annum i i 12s. b\d., besides chief rents of i8j. id. a 

 year to the king, I2s. ^d. to William Berkeley, and b\d. to James Berkeley.' 

 The names of the incumbents of benefices in Gloucestershire are not given, 

 but we know from the subsequent returns under the Chantries Acts of i 545 

 and 1547 that Robert Coldwell was still in office. 



It is a strange thing that both these chantry certificates made under the 

 Acts of Henry VIII and Edward VI called the foundress Katharine Vele, and 

 the school the Vele School, as if the founder had married Vele after Lord 

 Berkeley, whereas she was Lady Vele for only a few years, and Lady Berkeley 

 for the last twenty-nine years of her life. Yet we can hardly suppose that 

 the parishioners who furnished the information on which the certificate was 

 based invented the name. The use of the name leads one to suppose that 

 the property given to the school was property the lady had acquired from 

 her first husband, and almost to suspect that in founding the school she was 

 carrying out, not her own design, but the will of her first husband who had 

 died forty-one years before. 



Henry VIII's Chantry Commission reported l under ' Wotton-under- 

 Hedge,' ' Katheryn Vele Fre Scole foundyd to fynd a Scole maister and 

 2 pore scolers for ever and to hav the value of the landes, which is worth 

 by yere, ij i$s. 2d. Vele Scole is nere the church.' The income is set out ; 

 and payments ' for the maister,' whose name is not given, of ^10 is. j\d. 

 and 'for one scoler, 4 ' and after deduction of rents resolute, 22s. ^\d.* 

 fees 2%s. and the ' kynges tenthes ' (showing that it was valued as an eccle- 

 siastical benefice), 23^. 3^., 'so remayneth, nil.' 



Edward VI's Chantry Commissioners, who said there were 800 house- 

 ling people, i.e. communicants, in the parish, representing a population of 

 some 4,000, reported 



Wotton Fre Scoole founded by one Lady Katheryne Vele for the findinge of a mayster 

 there freely to teache gramer and for two poore scolars also there to be founde with the pro- 

 fittes commyng of the same landes. Sir Robert Coldwell, scolemaister there, of the age of 

 60 yeres, being unweldy, and for that purpose neither mete in desciplyne nor behaviour, 

 and hath no other lyving then the seid scolemaistership which ys yerely 



The figure was never filled in. The whole of this entry is, however, crossed 

 out in the original certificate, and written instead is a 



Memorandum that there is within the said parishe a free scole of the foundacion of oone 

 Ladie Katheryn Veele, whoe gave certeyn lands and tenements to the yerelie value of 

 16 145. 8d. 



(No two values in the two sets of certificates agree) ' for the findinge of a 

 mayster there to teach gramer freelye and for 2 poor scolers there also to be 

 mayntayned and founde with the issues and profittes thereof.' 



The effect of the substitution of the memorandum for the certificate 

 was a finding that the school was not a chantry within the meaning of the Act. 

 So the school escaped at the time the confiscation of its property and went 

 on. But it did not escape subsequent attacks from the hunters after what 

 were called ' concealements,' attorneys mostly, who ferreted out lands, which 

 the crown might claim as passing under the Acts for the dissolution of monas- 

 teries or of chantries, laid informations against the holders before the law 



1 A. F. Leach, Engl. Sch. at the Reformation, 79, from Chant. Cert. 21. 

 * Ibid, from Chant. Cert. 22. 



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