Bath in its relation to Education. 129 



third was for the poor, another for the buildings, the 

 remainder for the clergy on condition that, amongst other 

 things, they should instruct the people. For this purpose 

 schools were provided, young ladies being received into 

 nunneries, and even the poorest children cared for by 

 religious organisations. 



At the Dissolution all this was changed. The church 

 lands were generally sequestrated and the old provisions 

 annihilated. Happily the deprivation in Bath was not 

 complete. Henry VIII. had spared some of the property, 

 and the Mayor petitioned the Government for one of the 

 thirty schools which Edward VI. proposed to establish. 

 The prayer was granted, the young King in Council ap- 

 proved, and what remained of the old monastic lands was 

 in 1553 made the endowment.* The Charters designated 

 the schools " Free Grammar Schools," or " Chartered 

 Schools of Literature," for "children most apt to learning," 

 indicating that though the benefit of the poor was espe- 

 cially intended, it should not be indiscriminate. That 

 others than the indigent shared is evident from the fact 

 that two eminent men of another class were alumni : John 

 Hales, well deserving the title " ever memorable," who 

 became Cambridge Professor of Greek at twenty-one, and 

 William Prynne, M.P. for Bath, Recorder of Bath, the 

 restless politician, the voluminous author, the great con- 

 stitutional lawyer. 



This brings us to a period when the school 



Seventeenth j^^^ ^^^^ -^^ ^^j.,^ f^j. ^^^^ ^^^^ j^^ jj^^ ^j^ 



Century. 



city. But there was no other school appa- 

 rently for the children of those who now flocked to Bath 

 and formed a new population. Nor does it seem that the 

 * See p. 93. 



