SCHOOLS 



(his school fellows) of suche old matters, as they have bene togeather havinge 

 never dwelled farre asunder.' 



Old Sir Robert came to an end at last, but not before he had seen the 

 mass restored ' againe in Queen Marye's tyme, not longe before he dyed,' as 

 Thomas Hewes, yeoman, aged 87, said : 



At whose buryall he this deponent was amongst a great many other people and all or moste 

 of his schoolers ; and afterwards he (this deponent) had some of his bookes and papers that 

 contayned the pedigree and names of the ladye that founded the said chauntry and schoole 

 and of all the oldest of her house who were Berkeleys which papers he had till within 20 

 ycres past. 



The next master was ' Master Knight,' who was never called the 

 Morrow Mass priest, but kept the school there * till he fell into trouble 

 aboute the lands belonging to it and in thende was put out,' says Agnes 

 Adams, in whose house old Sir Robert died. She remembered Knight before 

 he was ' shaven and made preiste and did weare a long yellow bearde, which 

 when it was shaven and his crowne also he seemed to be not the same man.' 

 He seems to have been the Robert Knight who became B.A. at Oxford 

 20 October, 1540, M.A. 1545. About 1559 the first attack on the school 

 lands was made, according to 'ould Moore,' who knew that Sir John Berkeley 

 came * when question was made to the saide landes by some that were come 

 thither at that tyme to enquire about them and that by his meanes the same 

 was stopped, and no more adoe was thereof made for 20 yeeres after, that 

 ever this deponent hearde of.' 



Meanwhile Sir Robert Coldwell had himself inflicted almost as bad a 

 wound on the interests of his successors by granting a lease on 18 May, 1535, 

 of the school lands at Nibley, then called Warren's Court, to one William 

 Thomas for eighty-eight years at 48*. a year. To this lease John Smith 

 became entitled on his marriage with Grace Thomas, William Thomas's 

 daughter, in 1578. 



The witnesses at the inquisition in 1619 said that about forty years 

 before the second attempt was made on the school lands to bring it under the 

 Chantries Act 



Then Master Thomas Duport, by the helpe of the old Lord Berkeley pacified the same 

 again and afterwards when Master Stanton was schoolmaistcr under Master James Duport 

 he stopped the matter again with other persons a third tyme, which he, ould Moore, 

 knoweth because he was Master Duport's baylie of the schoolhouse lands and that 

 stopping cost money. 



This last stoppage appears to refer to an inquisition, held in 1588, which 

 resulted in a grant by Queen Elizabeth of 31 March, 1589, to Charles 

 Badghot and Bartholomew Yardley and their heirs of the school lands. As 

 this grant would have superseded Smith's lease (it is stated in subsequent 

 proceedings) Smith bought up the patentee's rights for >C 2O - 



By some means the school came to be a family appanage of the Duport 

 family. An indenture is extant of i September, 1592, by which John 

 Duport ' doctor of divinitie, master of Jesus College in Cambridge, and 

 master of the perpetuall Scholehouse or grammer schole and two poore 

 schollers clerkes founded in the towne of Wotton under edge,' leased to James 

 Duport of Medhurst, Leicestershire, the whole of the capital messuage in 

 Wotton and ' the manor of the said schole and all its property in Nibley and 



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