SCHOOLS 



THE history of the schools in Sussex is a remarkable illustration of the truth that educa- 

 tion and culture vary directly with the development of wealth and industry. While 

 the land-locked ports on the coast were frequented by the small ships of early days, 

 which conducted the carrying trade with Normandy and France and the Netherlands, 

 and while inland the Sussex ironworks, supplied with fuel by the charcoal burners of 

 the forests, were the great staple of the iron trade in England, population and industry flourished 

 and the schools flourished with them. 



Chichester, Hastings, Arundel, Shoreham, Lewes, Cuckfield, Horsham, Steyning, Billingshurst 

 were all seats of ancient pre-Reformation grammar schools, most of which disappeared or fell into 

 desuetude in the eighteenth century, and have left but scant traces of their history. 



When in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries commerce deserted the petty ports, silted up 

 by the shingle banks and encroachments of the sea, and the ironworks followed the coal to the 

 midlands and the north, the schools decayed with the decay of wealth and population. When from 

 1825 onwards the improvement of the means of locomotion began to make the coast of Sussex one 

 large watering-place and health resort, and the Weald of Sussex became a suburb of London, the 

 return of population and of wealth, without industry, threw up new schools, and Brighton and 

 Eastbourne, Worthing and Hastings, flooded with private and preparatory schools for the upper 

 classes, have also developed public schools for the resident population which caters for their wants 

 and thrives on the spilth of the wealth of the metropolis. 



Thus at Battle we find the schoolmaster appearing casually, not as a new creation, in the 

 middle of the thirteenth century. Among the Battle Abbey charters 1 is one of I April, 1251, by 

 which Richard, dean of Battle, in the presence of his son's wife conveyed a messuage in Battle to 

 Nicholas de Sarcrino (probably a misreading for Sacraria, meaning the sacristan of the monastery). 

 The first witness was Henry, schoolmaster, born 2 in Cornwall (Henrico, magistro sco/arum, oriundo de 

 Cornubid). It is illustrative of the schoolmaster's position as a secular and not a monk of the abbey 

 that he should be the first witness of the deed of the dean, the principal secular priest of the exempt 

 jurisdiction of Battle. Henry, schoolmaster, 3 witnesses another and undated deed of a little 

 later date by which Reginald, abbot (1261-81), and the convent of Battle leased land to Denise 

 Palmer. By 13 December, 1277,* the master was dead, as on that day Gilbert Rudefin made a 

 feoffment to Alice daughter of Henry, master of the school at Battle, of a croft of land lying near 

 St. Mary's Church ; and in 1279 Stephen Sprot of Hastings and Mary his wife concurred in a 

 feoffment relating to the same land to the same Alice daughter of Henry, master of the school at 

 Battle. It is difficult to refer to the originals to see whether 'school' is in the singular or the plural, 

 or to ascertain from the contemporary and later almoners and other obedientiaries' accounts its exact 

 relation, if any, to the abbey. But it is clear from schoolmaster Henry of Cornwall having a 

 daughter that he was neither a monk nor a priest, but a secular clerk and, we may conjecture, 

 appointed by the dean of Battle, as in a similar case in the eleventh century we find the dean of 

 Thetford appointing the schoolmaster of Thetford. 



Whether this school was endowed, and if so how long it went on, and what became of it, we 

 do not know. But Battle still possessed in the reign of Elizabeth a school and a schoolmaster, who 

 was a personage and had strong, if not wise, opinions. 



There be schoolmasters who teach without licence and be not of a sound and good religion, a.; 

 the schoolmaster in the town of Battell, the vicar of Findon, and the schoolmaster that teaches in the 

 Lodge at Stansted who teacheth Mr. Stoughton's children, being comptroller of my Lord of Arundel's 

 house. 



In the town of Battell when a preacher doth come and speak anything against the Pope's 

 doctrine they will not abide but get them out of the church. They say that they are of no juris- 

 diction but free from any bishop's authority. The Schoolmaster is the cause of their going out, who after- 

 wards in corners among the people doth gainsay the preachers. It is the most popish town in all Sussex. 



1 Descriptive Catalogue of Battle Abbey Charters, on sale by Robert Thorpe (London, 1835), 46. 

 1 In the catalogue ' Oriundo de Cornubia ' is printed as if it was the name of a different witness. 

 ! Not as in the catalogue, p. 47, ' master of the Scholars,' but ' magister scolar,' i.e. scolarum, or school- 

 master. 



* Ibid. 49. 4 S.P. Dom. Eliz. vol. 60, No. 71. Visitation of Chichester Diocese, 1569. 



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