

SCHOOLS 



David Davis, D.D., 1784-97, was of Pembroke, Cambridge, and John Stevens, 1797-1802, 

 of Winchester and New College, Oxford. Moses Dodd, 1802, combined his duties with those 

 of the rectory of Fordham, Essex. George Bliss in 1808, son of an Oxford bookseller, was of 

 Christ Church, Oxford. In 1818" he had forty boys, boarders and day boys included ; the former 

 at 60 guineas, the latter at 8 guineas a year. Mr. Bliss seems to have fallen on lean years. The 

 lands of the prebend being let at the old rent of 13 odd, on beneficial leases for three lives, the 

 endowment was very small when no lives fell in bringing renewal of leases and the large sums, 

 being generally two or three years' purchase of the real rack-rent value, due for such renewals ; and 

 Mr. Bliss complained that it was ' many years since any such renewal has taken place.' 



Charles Webber, 1824, also of Christ Church, continued his schoolmastering after he became 

 a canon residentiary in 1829, and from 1837 he also held the rectory of Staunton on Wye, 

 Herefordshire. 



Soon after his incoming, in 1828, statutes were made by Bishop Carr limiting the number of 

 free scholars in the school to ' 10 children born of Protestant parents resident in Chichester or 

 children of clergymen having cure of souls in the diocese, to be nominated by the dean and chapter.' 

 These statutes being made by the bishop alone without the chapter were wholly invalid, and it is 

 certainly doubtful how far in any case it was competent for the bishop to restrict the freedom of the 

 school in this way or impose denominational disabilities. 



Under Webber the school was extremely flourishing. There were seventy or eighty boys there, 

 including some thirty or forty boarders. It was used as a preparatory school for Westminster by 

 the late duke of Richmond and his brother, Lord Henry Lennox, and the county gentlemen and 

 upper classes of the town resorted thither. 



The next master was Thomas Brown of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, matriculated 1822, at the 

 age of twenty-three, and already vicar of St. Peter's and St. Paul's, Chichester, in 1836, appointed in 

 1840. Under him the school fell to pieces. In 1854 the dean and chapter reported to the 

 Cathedral Commission 28 that there were only eighteen boys, none of them on the foundation. In 

 June, 1 860, a complaint was made in the House of Commons of the state of the school and the 

 difference made between free boys and others, by which the freedom of the free scholars was 

 restricted to Greek and Latin, and ^ioa year fees allowed for other subjects. In i866 29 there were 

 eighteen boys, but they were all under fourteen years of age, the school being used in fact as a 

 preparatory school for the public schools. The Assistant Commissioner's Report pointed out that the 

 state of the school was due partly to the anomalous position of the master, who claimed the prebend 

 as a benefice, and was himself a member of the governing body, the chapter, which ought to have 

 kept him in order. In 1864 the endowments had been increased by the sale of part of the land of 

 the prebend to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, which resulted in a steady income of 60 a year, 

 in exchange for the uncertain falling in of fines. In 1879, on the death of Mr. Brown, the Rev. 

 Frederick George Bennett succeeded. He was from Exeter Grammar School, won a Dyke scholar- 

 ship at St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and took his degree in 1864. From 1860 he was assistant master 

 at St. John's College, Hurstpierpoint. In 1880 new statutes were made by Bishop Durnford with 

 the assent and consent of the dean and chapter, and the prebendary, which purported to repeal any 

 former statutes inconsistent with them. These required fees from all boys, including ' cathedral 

 scholars ' nominated by the dean and chapter ; directed religious instruction to be in the book of 

 Common Prayer ; and gave the dean and chapter the right of sending the choristers to the school. 

 The boys about 1885 had risen to about thirty-nine ; eleven being the choristers paid for by the dean 

 and chapter, two cathedral scholars paying 5 a year instead of 1 5 a year, the full fees, and four 

 boarders. But for the last ten years the school has consisted almost entirely of the choristers ; and 

 for all practical purposes Chichester contains no public secondary school of a high grade. 



HASTINGS GRAMMAR SCHOOL 



Hastings having an ancient collegiate church in the castle had, as a matter of course, its usual 

 concomitants of a grammar school and a song school, under two of the canons, who, whether they 

 enjoyed the titles of chancellor or precentor or not, exercised the functions of those dignitaries. 



In an early fourteenth-century copy of a deed of Henry count of Eu (Augi) addressed to all 

 his chiefs (primatibus), his subjects and his men, as well French as English, and therefore not later 

 than the days of King John, the count says that much as he should like to augment the prebends he 

 cannot do so, but he can and will put on record what his father and still more his grandfather gave 

 so that they may not be diminished. He then sets out a ' Commemoration ' of those who gave 

 benefices. First and foremost comes Robert, count of Eu, whom his grandson styles ' founder ' and 



"Carlisle, Endowed Grammar Schools, \, 592. K Cath. Com. Ref. (1854), 146. 



* Schools Inq. Com. Rep. xi, 221. 



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