SCHOOLS 



the choristers by decree of the dean and chapter in augmentation of his stipend yearly 20J., whereof 

 paid for the term ended at Michaelmas last 5*.' In 15545 tne anthem is explained by the item 



and for the choristers' anthem now 2 1 nothing here, because it is allowed to the choristers' master in his 

 stipend abovementioned with other allowances there ; but he [the accountant] seeks allowance for 

 shaving the choristers ; and for their livery this year nothing ; paid also 40*. to the same choristers by 

 the gift of Dean Fleshmonger for mending their shoes and stockings, as above, 45*. \d. 



In the following year we find ' paid to the use of the choristers for saying their suffrages 24^. and 

 paid to the choristers' teacher for his daily service 30*. 4.0".' 



The next year again Richard Basse received 5 i y. 8d. in all ; 4 1 3*. 8d. statutable stipend 

 and i as augmentation. Richard Basse must have acquired his name from his bass voice, and have 

 started a musical family, for we find a generation later, in 1585, of the five lay vicars three were 

 Owen Base, John Base, and Henry Base, receiving among them 20 35. 4^. a year. 



The same sums which Richard Basse had were still paid in 1560 to William Payne, then 

 informator of the choristers, and in 1585, when the book ends, the augmentation is still expressed as 

 being during the pleasure of the dean and chapter. It is clear that the choristers had their separate 

 master, and that in no way was the grammar schoolmaster, the prebendary of Highley, their special 

 master or responsible for them. It seems unlikely that they even went to the grammar school to 

 learn grammar ; but that they had any special claim on it is certainly not the case. 



The head master of the grammar school meanwhile was Augustine Curteys, admitted 27 August, 

 1554. He was an Oxford man, M.A., May, 1540, and held for only two years. Robert Owing, 

 LL.D., 4 November, 1556, who has not been traced, held for five years only till 1561, when he 

 was perhaps dispossessed by the Protestant reaction. Matthew Myeres of Christ Church, Oxford, 

 M.A., 1553, appointed 5 April, 1561, combined the office from 9 December, 1566, with the 

 rectory of Chelsea. The years 1570, 1571, and 1572 saw each a different person, Henry Black- 

 stone, who became residentiary in 1573, John Penven, who became vicar of Staines, John Beeching, 

 who held until 1578. There seems to be nothing to record of George Buck, 10 December, 1578, 

 John Sandford, 21 February, 1582. William Sale, who had been schoolmaster at Stafford, was 

 appointed 21 June, 1591. In 1594 he was followed by Hugh Barker, scholar of Winchester, 

 fellow of New College, 1585, M.A. and B.C.L., who finds a place in the Dictionary of National 

 Biography, chiefly because after ten years' reign he became in 1605 a D.C.L. and practised in the 

 ecclesiastical courts, becoming chancellor of Oxford diocese and Dean of the Arches. But he is also 

 noteworthy as being the master who taught at Chichester School, as is alleged, those two celebrated 

 contemporaries Archbishop Juxon and John Selden. It is by no means certain that Juxon was at 

 Chichester School. He was born in Chichester, where his father was the bishop's receiver, but the 

 family were Londoners, and if Juxon was at the prebendal school at all it was only as a preparatory 

 school for Merchant Taylors, of which he was a scholar. Selden, on the other hand, was at the 

 prebendal school during his whole school life. Born in 1584 at West Tarring, he was so much a 

 pupil of Hugh Barker's that when he left the school in 1600 for Oxford he went to Hart Hall, 

 there to be under Hugh Barker's brother, Anthony Barker, then principal of it. It was no doubt 

 from Barker that Selden imbibed his taste for the civil and canon law and the sturdy liberal 

 principles which made him resist the pretensions alike of kings, bishops, and the Westminster 

 Assembly of Divines ; and made him the trusted legal adviser of the whole lay parliamentary 

 party. 



In 1604 another Wykehamist and New College man, George Elgar, B.C.L., succeeded Barker. 



On 27 September, i6i6, 18 the dean and chapter made decrees 'for the better ordering of 

 their church and churchmen,' one of which was that the precular or beadman ' more diligently 

 perform his office prescribed him by Bishop Sherborn's statutes and purge the church of hogs and 

 dogs and lewd persons that play or do worse therein, under the pain of tfd. totiens quotiens. Let 

 him admonish the schoolmasters concerning their scholars.' One might conclude that the unhappy 

 boys, thus coupled with hogs, dogs, and lewd persons, had no place to play in except the street and 

 the churchyard. But in 1635 19 among the injunctions of Archbishop Laud on his metropolitical 

 visitation the dean and chapter were ordered 



That you use some means with Mr. Peter Coxe, an Alderman of the city of Chichester, that the piece 

 of ground now in his possession be laid open again, that the scholars of your Free School may have 

 liberty to play there as formerly they have had time out of mind ; and, if he shall refuse, to give us 

 or our Vicar General notice upon what reason and ground he doth it. 



When deans and chapters were abolished, Parliament saw to it that the cathedral grammar 

 schools were maintained, and as a rule better maintained than they had been before. Unfortunately 



"Stat. Bk. 17. 



" Great Thick Bk. 174. 



407 



