SCHOOLS 



conversion of superstitious uses to the foundation of grammar schools ; but 

 unfortunately it went on : * Allso the said chauntrye prieste ' was 'to celebrate ' 

 and praye at thaulter called St. John Baptist and Saynt Nicholas altar within 

 the parisshe church of Newlande for the soules of the said Roberte Gryndoure 

 hys successors and benefactors and for all Christen soules ' * for ever.' Being 

 a chantry, to hire a priest to pray the dead out of purgatory, as well as a 

 school, the foundation was ' for superstitious uses ' and swept into the meshes 

 of the Chantries Act, and included in the certificates taken under it. How- 

 ever, we must be thankful to those who made the certificates for the 

 extremely interesting information which gives this foundation its special 

 interest and makes it a * fingerpost ' instance on the much-vexed question 

 as to the meaning of the term * free grammar school.' For the curious 

 record of the school being half-free, that is to say that while boys learning 

 grammar paid the full customary tuition fees of 8</. a quarter, boys learning 

 merely their ABC and to read paid only half that, an arrangement which 

 made the school half-free, is as absolutely unique in itself as it is absolutely 

 convincing evidence that the freedom of schools meant freedom from fees. 

 The use of the term * a half-free grammar school ' shows conclusively that the 

 word 'free' did not refer to the liberal education which free grammar schools 

 gave, nor to freedom from ecclesiastical control, which not one of them in 

 fact ever enjoyed, nor to freedom from the law of mortmain, from which 

 they were not free, nor to any one of the numerous fanciful explanations 

 invented for the term, to escape from its obvious, primary, and true meaning, 

 which was simply and solely freedom from tuition fees ; nothing more and 

 nothing less. The assumption that the ordinary grammar-school fee was 

 8</., the half-fee being 4</., is a rather remarkable instance of the customary 

 and general character of the school arrangements of England and their per- 

 sistence. At Merton College in 1 277 the fee of the master of ' Glomary ' 

 or grammar was 4^. a term, and it remained the same in 1309 and 1339 ; 

 but about half a century later, in 1382, the payment had gone up to 8</. a 

 term, with three terms in the year. As we said in the Gloucester School 

 case in 1410, 2s. a year was regarded as the nominal fee, the masters 

 complaining that unlicensed competition had reduced it to half that. The 

 Oxford University statutes in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries fixed 

 the grammar school fee at 8</. a term. At Ipswich in 1477 the fee was 

 fixed at \\d. for grammarians, 8</. for psalterians, and 6d. for primarians, but 

 the tariff was lowered again in 1482 to Sd. a quarter. 



We are enabled to trace the continuance of Greyndour's Chantry 

 Grammar School in accordance with the foundation by the institutions of 

 the masters in the registers of the bishops of Hereford, the deanery of the 

 Forest of Dean having belonged to that diocese, and not, as the rest of 

 Gloucestershire did, to the diocese of Worcester, until the constitution of 

 the bishopric of Gloucester in 1541. 



Incidentally we learn from these that Jane Greyndour did not long 

 remain a widow after the death of the founder, Robert Greyndour. For on 

 4 March, 1448,' 'Sir John Barre knight and Jane his wife, late wife of 

 Robert Greyndour,' presented William Coburley, chaplain, to the perpetual 



1 Harl. MS. 605. In Chant. Cert. 23 it is called ' Saynt Nicholas aulter ' simply. 

 ' Heref. Epis. Reg. Beauchamp, fol. ^. 



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