A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



first half of the fifteenth century, and seemed likely to anticipate the Tudor 

 development, when it was abruptly checked by the Wars of the Roses. The 

 movement seems to have taken its initiative from the efforts of the first 

 generation of scholars of Wykeham's College at Winchester, in 1382 to 1412, 

 who took the chief posts in church and state by storm, and were earnest to 

 reproduce in other places the institution from which they themselves had 

 ' come to great things.' The most conspicuous result of their efforts was the 

 foundation by Beckington and Chicheley in the name of the king of 

 St. Mary's College, Eton, and St. Mary and St. Nicholas, otherwise King's 

 College, Cambridge. But Eton, first founded in 1440, was rivalled, and, for 

 perhaps a century, eclipsed by St. Anthony's School, London, founded in 

 1441 by another Wykehamist, William Say, dean of St. Paul's and master of 

 St. Anthony's Hospital, which was connected, and was affiliated to Oriel 

 College, Oxford, by exhibitions there on the model of Winchester and New 

 College ; while King's was equalled by Chicheley's foundation, also in the 

 name of the king, of All Souls College and surpassed by Waynflete's 

 Magdalen College, at Oxford, though the latter had to wait for its legal com- 

 pletion till the rival Roses had been united in the persons of Henry VII and 

 his queen, while Corpus and Christ's Colleges at Cambridge, though on a 

 lesser scale, were on the same model as King's College. Eton was a college 

 and an almshouse with a grammar school attached. Of similar foundation 

 was Archbishop Chicheley's Higham Ferrers College, Northamptonshire, 

 1437, Draper's Newport College, Shropshire, 1442, Wye College, Kent, 

 1447, and Bishop Stillingfleet's College of Acaster in Yorkshire about 1460. 

 The Hospital and Grammar School of Ewelme in Oxfordshire, the Gram- 

 mar School and Song School of Alnwick in Northumberland ; Sevenoaks 

 Grammar School, Kent ; Wokingham Grammar School, Berkshire ; Tow- 

 cester Grammar School, Northamptonshire, are others of the numerous 

 grammar schools founded in the same twenty years. 



Newland Grammar School was founded in the height of the movement 

 and is of especial interest, in that it was not founded like most of those 

 named, by successful clerical statesmen, who, being enforced celibates, were 

 by custom, which in another form under Henry VIII assumed the force of 

 law, almost bound to commemorate their names by charitable benefactions in 

 their native places, but by a country gentleman, a married man, though one 

 without heirs male of his body to perpetuate his name and lineage. 



Thanks to the researches 1 of Sir John Maclean we know a great deal 

 about the founder and his wife. Robert Greyndour was a son of Sir John 

 Greyndour, knight, sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1405 and 1411, who had 

 inherited from his mother, Margaret of Abinghall, the manor of Abinghall 

 and half of the manor of Mitcheldean. 1 Sir John died in October, 1416, 

 Robert succeeded to his estates, he married Jane, daughter of Thomas Rigge 

 of Charlcombe, Somerset, and died 19 November, 1443.* He was described 



1 Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soe. vi, 144-8 ; vii, 1 17-25. Sir John Maclean, however, attributes two 

 chantries to Robert Greyndour, the chantry school at Newland, and another, also a chantry school, in Mitcheldean 

 church ; ibid, vi, 166, 263. This last attribution is an entire mistake, owing, apparently, to an erroneous 

 copy of the Chantry Certificate which placed under Mitcheldean the Newland foundation. Sir John 

 Maclean himself says that he could find no institutions to the Mitcheldean chantry. Naturally, as there 

 was no such chantry. 



' Inq. p.m. 22 Hen. VI, No. 34. 



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